


First Light

by xenontrioxide



Series: Sunrise [3]
Category: Horizon: Zero Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: BACK ON MY BULLSHIT, Canon Compliant, Cute Aggression, Disabled Character, Drunken Shenanigans, Emotionally blueballing yourself, F/M, Family Member Death, Flashbacks, Flirting, Hunters & Hunting, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mutual Pining, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-War, Psychological Trauma, Slow Burn, Spoilers, idiots to lovers, yeah i'm making tags at 3:30 am
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-01
Updated: 2019-10-18
Packaged: 2020-04-06 05:34:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 43,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19056244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xenontrioxide/pseuds/xenontrioxide
Summary: I hope that today is just a sunrise for us, not a goodbye.





	1. Chapter 1

The fresh-fallen snow around her is at least hip-deep and Aloy struggles to make her way through it. Her thoughts about the Broadhead that had bucked her run pitch-black. As soon as she’s caught up with it, she’ll put her spear directly through its processing core and be done with the damn thing. The cold in the northern fields of the Cut is an enemy just as bitter and tangible as any she’s tangled with before. It seeps through even the Banuk armor she wears until her bones ache from it. It is a distraction – and a welcome one, at that.

After she’d found Elisabet’s bones and buried them in the tradition of the Nora, Aloy had become a ghost. Days turned into weeks, weeks into months, and still she floated on the outskirts of civilization, avoiding contact whenever possible. She traded for goods from time to time, but for the most part, she simply let a Strider carry her as it would. She combed through ancient ruins, seeking out any remnants of the past that she might have missed. She climbed to new heights in search of the metal flowers that bloomed in the wake of DEMETER’s awakening.

Then, because she hadn’t known where else to go, she’d retreated to the bunker at GAIA Prime, in the space that had once been Sylens’s. It was remote and disconnected from the rest of the world, true. But it was near one of the closest things she had to a parent, and rich with the memory of the second.

This space she set about in making her own: The metal flowers she’d collected she mounted on the walls, so that when she entered they bloomed at once in response to her, their soft lights casting a peaceful glow to the otherwise harsh interior. Over several days, she brought other treasures to the place, objects she’d gathered from across the Sundom and into the Sacred Lands. There were useful things, pieces of machine armor she could use to modify her own gear and scrap to enhance her weapons, but there was room for beauty there, too. She traded shards and machine parts to outlanders in exchange for soft cloths, woven tapestries, and embroidered silks. They were intended for garment making, but she found them beautiful all on their own, and hung between the metal blooms the small space was so transformed that she could barely remember its once stark and utilitarian past.

She wanted it to be hers. She didn’t want to think of the Old Ones, or of Sylens. She wanted to lay back and think of the beautiful things that this new world had been able to birth, despite all the things the new generations of human life had never experienced.

Even so, she was troubled. _What should she do now?_ The question had been lodged so deep in her mind that she’d woken, morning after morning, feeling as though it was on her lips and ready to be spoken aloud. For so long, she’d lived in a space between her time and the past. Learning who she was and the reason she’d been born, then fulfilling that purpose, had left her feeling adrift.

For a while, she entertained thoughts of returning to the Nora, but it left a bitter taste in her mouth. They had come to the battle, but… it didn’t matter what she said or did. To them, she would always be either outcast or revered, and the thought of being either opened a pit in her stomach. To them – even to the ones who she had tried to forge connections with, like Varl – the exploration she had grown to love would always be a feared activity at best and worthy of exile at worst. Besides, the tribe was so small now. There was also a part of her that found freedom in knowing that she was no longer beholden to them - no longer stooped beneath the pressure of their reverence.

Finally, she packed her belongings with the thought that she’d just go anywhere for a while, to clear her head. She has the idea of travelling to the Cut to trade for some of the rich pigments the Banuk used in their rock paintings, and trying her hand at decorating the spaces outside of her little room to match the brightness of the interior. It's a good excuse to remind herself of what civilization feels like, too, considering how long she’s existed as a ghost.

It turns out that the cold is a damn good distraction, considering she can barely breathe without feeling a knife of icy pain shoved into the back of her skull. It's a sensation she’s thought only accompanied drinking too quickly from an icy stream, not one that comes from breathing through an open mouth. She thought she’d known cold before, huddled in her little shelter with Rost during snowy winters in the Sacred Lands.

Being here makes her reconsider that. Summer had fled during the time she spent at her little home, and winter’s brutal touch upon the land made itself known. The Banuk must have felt its pressure, too, because she’d found the camp abandoned for the season. Now, more unsure than ever, she’s decided to try and find some pigments on her own, but as the nights stretch out longer and colder, she’s begun to reconsider that decision.

As she finally gets her footing atop the loose and powdery snow, she thinks that as soon as she’s left the Cut, she is going to go somewhere warm enough that she won’t even think the word “cold” for at least a month.

Besides, Aloy has been distracting herself for long enough.

* * *

It's long into the night, but Avad still sits upon the throne. He has a book of glyphs detailing eyewitness accounts of the attack, testimonies that Marad had been gathering, open across his lap, though it’s much too dark to read it. He studies it regardless, as if somehow just by touching the words he will gain a new understanding of how it was that Aloy had ended the assault.

War had come to Meridian, for the second time in less than four years. The only surprise was that it was not a continuation of the Carja Civil War on anything deeper than the surface. No, the truth had made itself clear when ancient machines beholden to some unknowable force had pulled themselves from the skeletons of the Old Ones, bringing a chaos down on the city that made the Liberation look like fireworks. Their war was a battle for the survival of humanity as a whole.

At least, that was what the wandering Nora hunter had claimed. To those that set eyes on the abominations that beset the capitol and lived to discuss it, there was no question as to the veracity of that claim. The one point no one debated was that there were fewer who discussed those nightmares than there should have been, but more than there would have been had Aloy not brought advance warning of the true scope of destruction that would soon fall upon them.

For a few days after the attack, after the last fires were extinguished, the Sundom was cast in a strange quiet. People moved in a trance, taking stock of what was damaged, what was lost. The only music that filled the streets during the day was the hymn of the priests, gathered in the Sun-Ring from dawn until dusk, calling to those who had been lost. Even the markets were quiet and empty with the sense of fear that another attack was just on the horizon. But no new attack came, and Meridian began to heal. The silence ended. It happened so quickly that it was as if the city had finally let out a held breath: now it was able to fill its lungs, and it breathed deep an air that was no longer thick with the threat of open conflict.

Things were different, of course. Following whatever it was that the machine-rider had done, the machines around the Sundom were more subdued and quiet than they’d been in almost a decade. It was a merciful reprieve, especially given the extent of work that was required to restore Meridian to its former glory. The scars upon the land would take years to fully recover, especially the loss of crops sustained when the village had gone up in flames. There were fringe cases, Shadow Carja and machines alike that continued their aggression. It was widely agreed that small skirmishes would be fought for years to come. But the capitol’s focus has changed from one of military necessity to humanitarian action and recovery. This is where Avad is the most comfortable as a leader, in so many ways, and he has more than enough to fill his plate.

The days pass in a flash of activity, of tasks both old and new. There are the usual petitions from citizens, but with more frequency they come from nobles worried about the partitioning of land in order to make room for the exiled Carja returning from Sunfall. There are ambassadors from other tribes who seek to re-open trade routes long since closed and abandoned now that the threat of civil war no longer casts its foreboding shadow over his tribe. There is the coordination of repair efforts to the western ridge of the city, the village, and the Temple of the Sun, the construction of bridges to open the path to the Spire anew, and the re-sowing of the Maizelands. There are meetings between Carja craftsmen and Oseram builders, commissioned to rebuild the great elevators.

Not everything is focused on rebuilding. Around Meridian and in the outlands surrounding Sunfall, search and rescue parties are organized. As the days pass, those missions became focused instead on recovery. Finally, after a few weeks, there is the planning for construction of some kind of memorial: something to remember those who will never return to their holy land.

Each task is, in turn, more exhausting than the last.

In the evenings, after the sun has set and Avad no longer feels the pressure to be as conspicuous as possible, he spends time with his family. He feels a desperate sort of need to attempt to make up for the time that they’ve lost to their enforced separation, and he uses this time as an opportunity to take Itamen under his wing as tutor of sorts. He is certain that the young prince has already learned quite a lot about his father’s style of rule, so Avad feels that the morality of being a good leader falls to him to teach. He needs to ensure the boy understands the weight of the crown, and the ways it is possible to rule a people without the bloodshed that had previously defined their tribe. The wounds caused by years of political and emotional turmoil are still present, but the fear that his father’s final legacy would be the war of brother against brother eases just a little more with each passing day.

There isn’t time to spare for idle thinking. Though exhausted, Avad should be satisfied with the progress he’s made. Night after night, though, he finds himself lying awake.

Four months. It has been four months since Aloy rappelled down the wall of the Temple to fight an enemy he still doesn’t understand, four months since the sun had cast a last long look on the fire of her hair. Four months of bureaucratic chaos, and nights of sleepless questioning. The more he tries to keep his thoughts on anything other than her, the more trapped his mind seems to become.

What, exactly, had happened at the gates of his city and at the Spire? After it was finally over, where had she gone? She’d explained the basics to him, of course – the Eclipse had harnessed Old World machines worse than anything all the years of the Derangement had summoned. But there hadn’t been time for more than that, and Aloy had spoken of it in such guarded language that he feared the truth was something more terrible than what they had seen.

Somehow, though, she had prevented that terrible catastrophe. Those ancient machines, the Eclipse, the Derangement itself… All of it wove together to form a tapestry that depicted a battle he’d had no choice but to watch, powerless, from the heights of his city. He often thinks back to her grip on his hand as he’d reached for his sword, strong fingers saying more than words ever could: this was his tribe, but it was her fight, somehow more personal to her than whatever quarrel he had with Helis.

Again and again, he turns over the details of it in his mind, and feels all the more a fool for it. Not because there are a thousand other things that should be keeping him up at night, but because he feels… Lost. There is just so much he doesn’t know, as though his understanding of even the basics of the world has been absolutely gutted.

He has so many questions. Once the danger had passed, he’d planned to ask Aloy to explain it in more detail. But when the smoke had cleared from the air, she was not with the exhausted warriors who made their way back into the city. If he hadn’t felt the strength of her grip and seen the fire in her eyes, he might have wondered if she’d ever existed in the first place or if she’d been a ghost conjured by his over-stressed imagination. She had arrived at Meridian and done exactly what she set out to accomplish, because that was the kind of person she was: Capable. Powerful. Possessing a self-assuredness that he tries, in some of his weaker moments, to emulate. His people look to him as the speaker of the Sun itself, and under that pressure, he finds himself wanting.

How is he supposed to rule when there is so much that he doesn’t understand? How is he supposed to protect his tribe when the world contained a secret as deadly as the one the Eclipse had harnessed?

Tonight brings no new answers, no sense of clarity. He brushes his fingers across his lips in unconscious thoughtfulness, looking out over the warm lights of Meridian. Far below the mesa, in the shadows of jungle trees, the lights of machine herds make their way across the landscape, cool and steady in contrast to the merry flickering of torchlight. They are much more sparse on the cliffs leading to the main bridge, but he knows a few herds of Striders often pass through in the evening calm, and this night is no different.

Then, as though he’d imagined that calm, the lights begin to pulse erratically and shift to red, machines scattering in all directions from a threat he can’t see. Avad’s heart catches in his throat and suddenly he is on his feet, clutching the balcony with white-knuckled hands. In the midst of all that chaos, one light burns steadily, moving in a direct line toward the city gates. It is telling of his mental state that his first emotion isn’t one of fear – he knows that light, and the purpose with which the machine is charging over the landscape tells him all he needs to know.

Aloy has come back to Meridian.

“Guards!” Avad calls, whirling where he stands to face the startled man who has been drowsing behind him. “Send for Erend – Marad! She’s here!”


	2. Chapter 2

Perhaps she’s moving faster than is wise, but on the flat road leading to Meridian, there’s an exhilaration in spurring a Charger to top speed. The nimble beast crosses great distances with every bound, wind whipping through her hair. The plateau opens to a scene that Aloy knows with an aching familiarity, merchant encampments set with goods waiting to be brought into the city. The lucky thing is that it’s night – she can’t imagine the terror that would be caused by a Charger springing through the outer gate during the already-chaotic jumble of the main thoroughfare’s daytime activity.

It’s only when she sees the first great archway of the bridge that she slows her pace to a trot, dismounting with ease and giving the metallic flank of the beast a solid slap to send it back into the wilds. Aggressive or not, it is for the best to keep it a safe distance from the settlement.

At either side of the entry to the bridge, Carja guards in full regalia regard her with a mix of awe – which she hates – and nervousness – which she appreciates. Finally, they stand to attention, one even saluting her – what she can see of his face seems a little familiar, perhaps a man she’s passed during one of her many travels through the Capital.

Aloy affords him a quick nod before setting foot on the path to the city. The bridge is an impressive construction, and it was a small mercy that it had been spared the same heavy damage that had taken down the great elevators. From here, she can fully appreciate the geographic disconnect that allowed Carja society to thrive in a way that was so different from that of the Nora. Erend was right: when it came to building, the Carja were true masters of the craft.

High above the valley floor, the rest of the world is a distant afterthought, something that can be observed without participation. There is no risk of stampeding herds of machines moving through a village, of bandit crews sneaking through dense woods to prey on the unaware. Food grows in abundance. Here, people have the time and freedom to turn to things that any good Nora would regard as frivolities. Even after she’d spent so much time in the city, it is still an overwhelming place at the best of times.

For the first time in the long journey back to Meridian, she begins to feel second thoughts about coming here.

Yes, she’d wanted warm, but she could have just as easily set up a makeshift camp out in the mesas and avoided such a populated zone, especially one she has had such… complicated interactions with. There wasn’t anything about the way she’d been treated before to make her think she wouldn’t be welcomed, but she’d seen the destruction that the city had suffered. Whether or not she’d been present, of course, trouble would have come to Meridian - but she was certain that there would be at least some that viewed her presence as a direct cause rather than part of the solution.

That alone isn’t the half of it, though. There are people here she wants to see, people she’s missed. Some she’s missed more than others, and to the ones she missed the most she owes an apology and an explanation. After the fighting, she’d just slipped away. If they were - if _he_ was - furious with her, she wouldn’t be entirely surprised.

She just hopes this hasn’t been a mistake, a small knot of worry hardening in her throat. There is a group approaching her from the city with purpose, and Aloy snaps from her reverie. _Too late to turn back now,_ she thinks, taking a deep breath of the cool night air.

Really, nothing should surprise her at this point in her life. All the same, when one of the figures suddenly breaks into a run, her heart leaps. She’d been so lost in her thoughts that she hadn’t considered that her arrival would have certainly been noticed from the mesa’s vantage, not until she realizes that the figure running to meet her is an entirely familiar one, bearing a wide grin on a mutton-chopped face.

Those things register the moment Erend lifts her in a crushing hug, holding her secure in his bear-like arms and spinning her in a delighted circle. “Aloy!”

She laughs, because how can she not? Her worries, that stone in her stomach – in an instant, they are gone, and he sets her back to her feet quite a bit more gently than he’d lifted her. “Fire and spit, girl, it’s good to see you again!” Regaining his composure the Oseram captain clears his throat, looking a bit abashed. “That is, assuming you’re not here to tell us to get ready for another fight for the survival of humanity itself. I mean. It’d be good to see you regardless, but – ah – damn it, you know what I’m trying to say.”

His tone is light-hearted and humorous, but beneath his smile she can see a flicker of genuine worry. A little needle of guilt stabs at her with the realization that she’s taken so long to come back to these people, and that in the past she _had_ only come to them in times of strife. Behind him, she notices that the Blameless Marad and a small detachment of the Vanguard have caught up. Marad certainly doesn’t show the same open joy that dances in Erend’s eyes, but there is a guarded little smile on his face all the same.

Quickly, she shakes her head. “No, no apocalypse this time.” Her cheeks are sore from smiling so broadly after so much time on her own. The delight of it all threatens to overwhelm her, the feeling that someone has been waiting for her sending soft warmth through her. Despite everything else, they are happy to see her. “It’s good to see you too. Both of you.”

To the older man, she offers a bow, one which he readily returns. When he straightens, his smile has widened to something genuinely warm. “The pleasure is ours. You’re always welcome in Meridian, particularly if you don’t anticipate any further structural damage.” His tone is dry, but she can see a sparkle of humor in his eyes. “What brings you back to our humble little kingdom?”

The simple question gives Aloy pause, and for just a second, she feels the stinging worry unfurl again in her thoughts. Hadn’t she just been trying to figure that out? How can she come up with an answer that will satisfy the most renowned tactician she’s ever known when she hasn’t even been able to answer it for herself?

Something must show on her face, because Erend – GAIA and All-Mother and Sun and any other benevolent deity that might be watching bless him – steps back into the conversation. “Ah, what does that matter? You’re here, and we’re damned glad to see you!”

Marad smiles his little half-smile again, nodding almost apologetically. “Of course. Olin’s house was bought not too long ago, but we would be honored to have you stay in the palace.”

Aloy almost protests. But then she lets the thought drop from her mind. If they are offering her a place to stay at the palace, they’ve almost certainly already discussed how to handle her arrival. It is… Somehow a comforting thought. Not only were the Carja not trying to run her out of town, they were actively trying to make sure she felt welcomed. That she is being welcomed at the _palace_ doesn’t go unnoticed, and a funny little twinge makes her suddenly very aware of the beating of her own heart. She pushes the feeling aside for now – while she will certainly be meeting with the Sun-King while she is here, she still has time to think about exactly what she’ll say to him. How can she possibly thank him for everything he’s done? How can she apologize for vanishing? “That’s very generous, thank you. As long as I’m not imposing.”

That gets a roar of laughter from the Oseram, and he slings an arm around her shoulders, leading her through the familiar courtyards and alleys that lead to the Palace of the Sun. “Like you could even if you tried. C’mon. Let’s get you to a place you can rest your head for the night.”

* * *

At first, Aloy assumes that she’s somehow managed to oversleep, sunlight filtering through the slotted windows across from the bed she’d collapsed in the previous evening. That isn’t quite right, though, she realizes. Up here, away from shaded trees and out of deep valleys, the sun’s light is fast to warm the air. She closes her eyes again, just taking in the sensation – the warmth, the lack of any need to rush, the simple luxury of time. There is a shallow dish of water in one corner of the room that must have been soaking in the light all morning, because it is warm on her face when she splashes it over her cheeks.

That quick splash turns into something more leisurely as she washes the grit from her skin. It feels almost unspeakably self-indulgent after weeks of bathing in icy streams, and is exactly the kind of experience that some part of her has been hoping to have in the city. While luxury isn’t something she’s ever valued before, now she has time to actually try and enjoy it.

She unpacks her few belongings, folding away the dirty hides she’d ridden into town wearing, and unbundles her blazon. Draped across the bedsheets, she runs a hand across the silk top, loosely smoothing out the wrinkles. When had she worn it last? It feels like it’s been lifetimes. She’s always been partial to the armor design of the Carja, protective and breathable, cinched in just enough to ensure that nothing ever caught or got in the way of quick movements. It’s a style well-suited to the hunting techniques Rost trained her in. The first time she saw the designs they’d been a marvel to her, machine plates cut and sanded to shape rather than simply strapped into place wherever they’d fit. The blazon had, of course, been far too light to wear into the Cut, and so she had shoved it deep into her packs and not given it another thought. Clothing was a silly thing to feel sentimental over.

Now, though, she lets herself consider sentimentality at the same time as she drinks in the other luxuries of the room. There is something soothing about taking the time to buff the armor’s metal fittings to a shine, and comfortingly familiar about the way it feels on her skin. She wonders, briefly, about leaving the more armored components off – but when she tries, she feels far too exposed. She isn’t a noble, and dressing as though she were strikes her as ridiculous.

As Aloy finishes tying a braid into her freshly-washed hair, there is a knock at the door. “Aloy? You up?” Erend’s voice rings out, muffled through the door. This time she isn’t at all surprised by his presence – she had been able to hear his footsteps from nearly a building away.

“Come in,” she calls as she adjusts the polished metal headpiece on her brow, using the water left in the bowl as a mirror.

The door creaks open, and Erend’s head pokes through the entrance. “Good, I was worried I’d wake you.” He smiles a bit absently, rubs his chin between thumb and index finger, then shakes his head as if casting a thought aside. “You got plans for breakfast? Vanguard’s been asking after you. You’re pretty popular around town, seems like.”

The Vanguard. Her comrades-in-arms, the men who had fought by her side when she’d purged HADES, who had put their lives on the line based on nothing more than her word. Her expression brightens immediately. “Honestly, I can’t think of anything I’d like more.”

“Good! Good, that settles it!” Erend beams at her. “Meet me in the marketplace in, say, a half-hour? That’ll give us plenty of time.”

 _Time for what?_ Aloy wonders, taken somewhat aback. _The market?_ She hides her confusion quickly, though, giving him a smile. “Sounds good. I’ll see you there soon.”

* * *

It turns out the market is not their final stop. It’s just where they are going to get a sack of curious, richly-scented beans. Then they stop again, at a stall where a noisy Oseram contraption grinds the beans into a fine powder. As they make their way through the already-busy market, Erend talks: about the goings-on in Meridian after she’d left, about the current state of Oseram-Carja relations, about the unification efforts now that the government of the Carja in Shadow has dissolved completely, and about the relatively high morale of the populace despite the losses incurred by so many. Aloy doesn’t have a lot to add but she listens attentively as they weave their way through the color and sound of the awakening city. Had there been so many people here the last time, or had she just been a ghost for so long that she’d forgotten what civilization felt like? She can’t remember, but it takes some effort to keep from feeling overwhelmed by it all. In the last hour, she’s spoken more than she’s said for weeks.

This time, she must not have hidden her discomfort quite as effectively, because Erend bumps his shoulder reassuringly against hers. “Just a little further. Not so many people out where we’re headed.” She nods, relieved. Exactly where they are going, though, is still a mystery. The palatial grounds are long behind them now, and she doesn’t remember anything of note on this side of the city.

Where they end up should have been obvious: the barracks. Inside, long wooden tables are covered with plates piled high with food, bowls of steaming soups, and wrought-iron kettles that steam over open fires. There, too, are the Vanguard and Avad’s personal honor guard, Oseram and Carja alike. When they catch sight of Aloy a delighted cheer goes up. People with faces both familiar and unfamiliar alike bob in and out of view, and for every man who greets her there is a question hurled her way. In the way of the Oseram, it is noisy and exuberant. Erend’s voice carries over the din. “Boys! Keep it down, let the girl get some food before you ask her for her damn biography!”

“We’re just glad she’s here, Cap,” one young man says. He has a gnarled scab over his face, recent enough that Aloy’s stomach knots suddenly.

Corrupter flames, Deathbringer missiles, Eclipse arrows. As surely as they’ve scarred the city, they’ve left their marks on people, too. The fact that they are somehow still glad to see her makes her feel profoundly guilty. “I’m glad to be here,” she says, quietly, but managing to smile regardless. “I didn’t ever get the chance to thank you all—”

A raucous cry goes up that cuts her off short, hearty laughter bubbling from the scarred man. “Hah! Like you need to! Protecting the Sundom and the world’s what we do best! Right, boys?”

The sentiment echoes and the icy knot in Aloy’s core loosens. She finds herself settling into the cheerful mood of the gathering, and while she isn’t sure she can be as noisy as some of the men even if she tries, she is more than capable of taking one particularly noisy fellow down a few pegs by trouncing him at an arm-wrestling competition. It seems for a time that the gathering will continue on for the entire day, but then the drink they’ve made from the ground beans – coffee, it’s called, bitter and invigorating – runs out. At that point, Erend calls the festivities to an end, vowing that the whole mess had better be cleaned up by the time he gets back or they’ll all be running laps around the Sun-Ring until Itamen inherits the crown.

Then, he accompanies Aloy back to the palace. By this point, word has spread that she is in town and she can hear her name on barely-whispered words, see as people try to get a glance of her before hurrying away. The whole thing makes her feel profoundly irritated, that sense of discomfort returning and growing by the minute. When they get back to the palace, Erend pauses outside the door of the room she’s been given. “Look, wherever you’ve been, whatever you’ve been doing, it’s alright. You’re always gonna be welcome here.” For such a simple statement, it means so much to hear. Aloy smiles. “So, ah – one last thing.” He reaches into a pouch at his hip, proffering a tightly curled letter with a red wax seal bearing the eight-pointed sun of the highest clergy and nobility. There is no reason for a priest to write to her, which leaves only one other option.

“A _last_ thing?” Aloy says, feeling a bit dazed as she breaks the seal, quickly scanning the letter – both with her eyes and with her Focus, so that the text is saved in case she needs to reference it quickly. “Seems like a _major_ thing.” The details are what she might expect, the language of the letter businesslike in its formality: His Radiance Avad, Fourteenth Ruler of the Holy City of Meridian and Speaker of the Sun, requests an audience with her. For dinner. Tomorrow evening, before sunset. Her head spins, and she touches the seal absently. “He sent… a summons?” Exactly what she’s asking, she isn’t sure. Erend interprets it correctly all the same.

“Actually, Marad sent a summons. Avad wanted to meet you here himself. Uh. Last night, as soon as you’d arrived.” He scratches the back of his neck, shaking his head. “Talked him out of that one. Nobles are a gossipy lot, and we figured you’d want the rest. So he said he’d meet you this morning. Then tonight. Marad had to talk him out of that, too. He’s still pretty pissed about the whole thing, but we’re trying to keep to protocol. Things have been a bit tricky around here, bureaucratically speaking.”

That makes a certain degree of sense, especially given the favor she’s been shown by Avad. Still, a hint of irritation creeps into her tone. “Why tomorrow instead of tonight? I don’t—” She stops mid-sentence and takes a deep breath. This is a very different world from the one she knows. Her frown deepens all the same. “Well, assuming it doesn’t give the bureaucracy too much of a headache, I accept.” She sighs, then shakes her head, letting the frustration go. “…Of course I accept. Tell him I’ll be happy to see him, assuming that doesn’t go against protocol.”

Erend’s lopsided grin says it all. It definitely goes against protocol, but he’s going to do it regardless.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whaddup i made an aloy/avad playlist if you're a cool kid like me  
> https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0glvxePTZfMIS8IjGSGaxP


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YEAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! this one got a little long but it's an important one!!!

That afternoon, Aloy decides to work off some of her irritation with a trip to the Hunter’s Lodge. Talanah is every bit as delighted to see her as she’s hoped – Hawk and Thrush, reunited, even though now it’s more like Sunhawk and Kestrel. The current report says a pack of Scrappers have been making a nuisance of themselves, dismantling the scaffolding workers have assembled to repair the path to the Spire. As soon as the pieces are put into place, the bothersome machines take it down all over again. In addition, a Thunderjaw has been sighted from the top of the ridge, pacing closer to the road than anyone is comfortable with.

They make the decision to hunt down the Scrappers, then move to the Thunderjaw’s location. There, they’ll gather more information about its behavior.

The Scrappers are nothing of note, just a chance to stretch her tense muscles. Hunting with Talanah is every bit the treat she remembers it being. The woman has a dramatic skill with the bow, clearly honed by the theatrical hunting traditions of the Carja. Aloy finds herself trying to keep up, wielding her spear with a flourish when she takes one machine down. When the Scrappers’ remains have been stripped for useful parts, they make their way to the place the Thunderjaw had last been spotted. Out in the last glimmer of the setting sun, the gleam of the great machine as it paces brings a sense of awe and trembling excitement to her. No matter what else she’s done, no matter what else she’s faced, a Thunderjaw is always a formidable opponent. It demands her respect, and she can appreciate what a tremendous construction it is.

“This time, little hunter,” the Sunhawk says, as they crouch behind a sandstone outcrop, “we strategize. We’ll take the beast down after your meeting with his Radiance. I don’t think they’d be happy if I sent you to a formal audience in an urn.” So saying, she slings her bow over her back.

Aloy frowns at her. The fight with the Scrappers has served merely to sharpen her hunger for the hunt, and to watch the great machine prowl below without diving in for a kill is more than just a little frustrating to the part of her that is hungry for a fight. Her bow fingers itch. “I’d like to see it try,” she mutters grimly. But she trusts Talanah, and so shoulders her own weapon. The Thunderjaw has earned a stay of execution, at least for the night.

That evening, after they’ve brought the remains of the Scrappers to the quartermaster of the lodge, there is a meal with the rest of the hunters. By the time Aloy finally makes her way back to the palace the moon is at its zenith and she is just a little tipsy, thanks to the rounds of flavorful wine Talanah insisted on bringing to the table. It turns out that the Carja hunters are every bit as boisterous as the Oseram guard, once they’ve polished off a few rounds. When she reaches her room, she is both pleased and a little perturbed to find that the basin of water has been replenished while she was out. Palace staff clearly have little concept of privacy. In that moment, though, it’s fine with her. She’s filthy from the hunt, and she revels in the opportunity to wash herself without having to find a stream or jump into one of the fountains, though the thought does occur to her.

Finally, clean and refreshed, stripped down to a comfortable tunic and tights, she falls back into the soft bed and closes her eyes.

How long she lies like that, she isn’t sure. She should fall asleep immediately, given the day she’s had. Her exhaustion hasn’t lessened in the slightest. But there’s still a thrill in her from all the excitement of the day, and the noise of late-night activity floating in through her window sharpens that alertness. No matter how she tosses in the bed, luxurious in its comfort and goose-down filling, it is unfamiliar and strange. She hadn’t noticed it the night before, but the long hours of travel must have tired her out even more than she’d realized. She stands to close the window, deciding that she can sacrifice the cool desert breeze in exchange for more quiet.

When she reaches the window, though, she freezes. Below, on one of the many balconies of the palace, a figure is standing positioned toward the lands below. She has no need to make out the person’s face or use her Focus to help identify him - the shape of the man is one she recognizes in an instant.

Aloy doesn’t really think. She climbs out onto the windowsill, dropping down to use the carved sandstone of the palace as handholds. Quickly and quietly she makes her way across the walls to the place where Avad is looking out over the desert, every bit as sleepless as she is.

* * *

At this point, there should be very little about the Nora huntress that surprises him. All the same, Avad jumps when she is suddenly climbing up next to him. “Aloy,” he says, breath catching in his throat.

Part of him wonders if he’s delirious from all his sleepless nights, but that is foolish. She is here, crouched like a hawk on the railing of his balcony, in a way he’s never seen her – not covered in armor, machine oil, and radiating ferocity. Her intensity, though, is every bit as familiar and clear as the Sun on a cloudless day. He is left floundering for words – there hasn’t been anything in all his formal education and training with political advisers that has prepared him to greet a visitor who has climbed in from a nearby window. He forces himself to relax, trusting in his instincts. If he comes across as a touch informal, he doubts it will be a problem. They’re alone here, and she’s never seemed to care about his status. If anything, he expects that a lack of formality will relieve her. “You couldn’t sleep either?”

She sits on the railing, swinging her legs, her back to the edge of the mesa. She shrugs her shoulders and brushes the dust from her hands. He finds himself watching, noticing the calluses on her palms. “It’s loud here,” she says, softly. At first he is bewildered – the city is at rest, the sounds muted and only occasionally rising to the palace. Then, though, he realizes she is used to camping out in the wilds, where human noise is all but non-existent. She makes a face. “The bed is soft, too. I’m just not used to it. What’s your excuse?”

The question, in its bluntness, catches him off guard. That casual air, the way she speaks to him as easily as Erend addresses the Vanguard… he is every bit as unaccustomed to it as she is to the evening noise of a city and the softness of a feather bed.

Avad leans back against the balcony, beside her, and crosses his arms over his chest. He turns his body slightly to face her. “There’s... a lot on my mind,” he says. It is a lame half-answer, but to burden her with the truth of it? That is unthinkable.

Aloy is quiet for a moment, her gaze falling on the richly decorated façade of the palace. When she finally speaks, her tone is flat. “So we’re having dinner tomorrow.”

He winces, all too aware that if he’s been irritated by the situation, she’s probably feeling it too. It makes him feel like, as the Oseram would put it, a heel. He nods. “It was Marad’s suggestion. He thought that it would be best, socially speaking, for us to meet in a formal setting. A lot of people are worried that you being here means that another threat has come.” Equally pervasive, particularly in the noble walks of life, are whispers that her being here means their king is engaging in a dalliance with a savage from the east. That little bit of knowledge isn’t one he feels the need to share.

All of it makes him want to scream and apologize all at once. Aloy must read the frustration in his face. “Well, I’m happy to disappoint them,” she says, suddenly light-hearted. “It _is_ possible for me to visit just because I wanted to be here.” Casually, so casually, she leans toward him, bumping her shoulder against his. In the light of the moon her face shines, hazel eyes bright. She is smiling.

So he smiles too, genuinely, for the first time in what feels like years. He realizes, finally, how worn down the last few weeks have made him. “I’m glad.” Then, as an afterthought, he asks about what has been troubling him. “Where have you been? I’d thought that you’d go home to the Nora, but…” he trails off, hesitating at the shadow that passes over her expression.

Aloy’s voice is soft. “I had too many unanswered questions still,” she says, as if it is the most obvious thing in the world. “I wasn’t going to find the answers with the Nora. They just want me as the mouthpiece to All-Mother, anyway, and I’m not interested in just being their…”

Abruptly, she cuts herself off, looking at Avad with wide eyes as she realizes what she is saying. He can’t help a wry laugh. “Well, it seems you’ve uncovered the other reason I’m not sleeping. Night is the only time I’m able to think on my own, without the Sun’s constant chatter in my ear. I like to try and enjoy it.” His smile fades, slowly. The truth of it, the part where never before in his life has he heard a message from the Sun to guide him, is a dangerous thought.

“Yeah,” she replies softly, crossing her arms over her chest and looking thoughtfully at the ground. His heart skips and he has to fight the urge to grab her as soon as she’s not supporting herself with her hands. It’s only the thought that if he makes any sudden movement she’s more likely to lose her balance that keeps him from reaching for her. She notices his response, the corner of her mouth twitching. “That’s enough to keep a person awake at night.”

Very deliberately, she lowers her hands to the banister again. His heart remembers how to beat properly, and he sags back before he remembers not to look too relieved. She’s grinning at him, and they stand in a companionable quiet, the sounds of machine chatter drifting up to the mesa. Avad rolls a thought in his mind, trying to find the right words for it. Finally, he dives in. “Aloy, I’ve been… Stuck, trying to understand it all.” The Eclipse. HADES. How Aloy had ended up at the center of a Carja conspiracy that had threatened everything he’d ever known. What she’d told him before seems woefully insufficient. “What happened at the Alight?”

She is quiet for a long time and he wonders if he’s asked too much, too soon. But then, suddenly, she turns to him. “I...” There is an excitement in her voice, and when he meets her gaze, it’s sparkling in her eyes. “It’s hard to explain, but – I can show you, Avad. Come with me.”

An energy like a lightning-snap goes through him, her eagerness contagious and intoxicating. Leaving won’t do anything to ease the weight of his people’s expectations, but he has been drowning in a sea of ignorance and this – this feels like a rope that will finally pull him free from the current.

Reality, of course, is a rock that is bound to his feet, and as quickly as that thrill goes through him, disappointment makes him sag.

“I would like nothing more,” he begins slowly, trying to keep his voice level, averting his eyes from her as so many of his own people do from him. “But my responsibility is here, with Meridian.”

“You’re the king,” she protests, that little furrow between her eyebrows deepening, her mouth turning downward in a frown that makes his heart ache. “Can’t the others take care of things here? Like Marad? Or Itamen? I know he’s young, but if they just need to know there’s royalty in Meridian, doesn’t he count?”

Avad’s smile is sad, a mockery of the genuine grin he’d felt scant moments before. It is hard to find a way to argue the point with her when his heart isn’t really in it. “I’m sorry, Aloy,” he finally says, tone bitter. “I’ll… Maybe Erend can go with you. I trust in him to bring me the answers you’ve found.”

Aloy’s disappointment sends a needle-sharp ache through his heart, and he crosses his arms almost protectively over his chest, turning his back to the city and leaning against the railing, so that he doesn’t have to look at her. If he does, she’ll see right through him. Aloy is quiet, but this time the silence between them is anything but comfortable. “I should try and sleep,” Avad says, giving her one last look, an apology on his face. “Thank you, Aloy, for thinking of me.”

In the dark she nods, face shadowed. “Sleep well,” she says, before swinging back over the side of the balcony. A moment later he sees her scale the wall, nimble as a lizard, back to the window of her room. He feels a pang of terror until she’s disappeared through the open window, and then he feels only fondness.

Of course that is the path Aloy would take. It is every bit as unconstrained and free as she is. He turns to return to his own quarters – but he, of course, takes the stairs.

* * *

The next morning starts as it always does, Marad reading out a list of petitioners who want something from their ruler. The standard requests: land rights, changes in taxation, complaints that there are too many Oseram or not enough Oseram in the marketplace, artisans bringing proposals for the detail work on the newly constructed bridge in exchange for a cut from the royal coffers.

He feels a headache starting already, throbbing just behind his eyes. It is just another day in a long line of similar days. Now that people have started to recover from the battle, they all just want… something. They expect he will give it to them, which would, of course, make someone else every bit as upset as they’ve been made happy. Today, though, it feels even more acutely irritating. There is a world beyond the palace at Meridian and he feels more disconnected from it with every day that passes. Seeing – speaking – with Aloy has just sharpened that knowledge until it is a rock that sits heavily in his gut. The reminder that he’ll be seeing her again tonight is the final note Marad reads out. It will be a meeting where he’ll get to sit and think about her invitation while having to put on the most formal face possible.

_Excellent._

He cleanses his face, looking at himself in the mirror. Luckily, his ceremonial tattoos hide some of the heavy bags under his eyes. He runs a hand through his hair to shake out any tangles, then gathers it beneath his headscarf. Atop that, he sets his crown, and looks back into the mirror. Like this, face flanked on either side with wings of metal, he looks far more confident and peaceful than he feels.

It is a small blessing, Sun be praised.

An attendant helps him into the rest of his ceremonial garb, since meetings with petitioners always require that he looks as regal as possible. The white silks gleam in the early morning light, and Avad takes a deep breath before stepping into the Sun for his first appointment of the day.

The day progresses much as he assumed it would. He has a hard time focusing on the task before him, but most of it doesn’t exactly require his full attention. During a short break to eat a light lunch, however, there is a commotion unfolding down below. Blinking, he stands to look over the railing, a cluster of grapes forgotten in his hand.

Aloy strides across the courtyard, wearing clothing he’s never seen her in before – Nora, clearly, but with a headpiece that makes him think of the Banuk nomads that sometimes find their way to the Sundom. Except – and this is what really gives him pause – it looks far more ceremonial than anything he’s seen. She is carrying something enormous on her back, but isn’t at all bowed beneath its obvious weight.

 _What in the name of the Sun is going on?_ he wonders, dumbstruck.

A crier, who announces petitioners to the throne, scrambles ahead of her, very nearly tripping up the steps to the throne. Both bewildered and a little amused, Avad turns his attention to the man, who is clearing his throat.

“Your Luminance, there is –” he is clearly struggling to figure out exactly what to say. “There is an envoy here, with a matter of utmost importance.” Behind him, Aloy has reached the base of the stairs and there she waits, standing straight and proud.

In the bright light, her hair shines like the feathers worn by the highest-ranked Carja Kestrels, a bizarre contrast to her otherwise cool and wintery garb. In its own way, though, it makes sense: she is dressed like a representative from not one, but many, major tribes. His own might as well be represented, too. “May I present to you – ah, uh. Aloy, Annointed of the Nora, chieftain-in-absentia of the Banuk of Song’s Edge, and defender of Meridian.”

The whole situation feels like a surrealist play, and it must show on Avad’s face, because the corner of Aloy’s mouth twitches. In a flash the humor is gone, replaced with grim determination.

“Your Radiance,” she begins, in a voice that leaves no room for questions, “I have come with a matter of utmost importance. In my time moving between the tribes, I’ve been known as one who sees the invisible, and I have now come to share my sight with the throne. I have learned the deep secrets of the Old Ones, information that is essential to the continued strength of Meridian – of all Carja. I am here to petition that you join me in a pilgrimage to one of these places, so that I might share these secrets with you.”

At his side, a high priest peers out at her from beneath his heavy red hood. “Your…” he pauses, obviously searching for the proper honorific. “Your excellence, the Reverent Irid has traveled far, he will be gladdened to see your face once more and accompany you to—“

“No.”

In the wake of that single word, silence falls among the gathered advisers, a few faces turning toward Avad as if seeking an answer from him. Instead they just see him as he studies Aloy, trying to keep his expression level even as his heartbeat quickens. What she is doing makes perfect sense in the light of their late-night meeting, but this is audacious to a degree he’s never even dreamed. His heartbeat quickens, because he has no doubt that whatever she has planned is going to be spectacular, and more than that, successful.

After all, that is just the kind of person she is.

Aloy steps toward the dais where Avad stands, meeting his gaze for a second before lowering her eyes respectfully. “What I have found is for the eyes of the Sun-King. No emissaries, envoys, ambassadors. I request that his Luminance alone accompany me.” The priest begins to speak in protest, and Aloy raises a hand, turning the full intensity of her gaze on him. It is hard not to pity the poor man. “Without the boldness of previous Sun-Kings, where would the Carja empire be? The Radiant Sadahin wasn’t afraid to leave the palace at Meridian, and the Sundom thrived for it. Since Radiant Khuvadin, has a sitting Sun-King so much as left Meridian except to vacation at Sunfall? Once, the bold Iriv sought the mysteries of the West, which no one – Carja or otherwise – had any knowledge of. This… inaction, it’s a long way to have fallen from the boldness of early Radiants.”

“The work of previous Sun-Kings is indeed a tremendous legacy to uphold,” the man says, voice quavering just a little. Clearly, he wasn’t expecting her to fling the history of their very people into his face. Avad is, himself, impressed. “But the Radiant Iriv also did not return from his quest, which is why those lands are now forbidden to us. And Khuvadin was equally unsuccessful in his dealings with the other tribes, and indeed his journeys put his life on the line at multiple occasions.”

Aloy’s expression shifts to one of grim satisfaction and she makes no effort to hide it. She’s planned some kind of trap, hunter that she is, and the poor priest has fallen right into it. “Yes, but Iriv and Khuvadin both lacked something Avad does not: a guide. I alone have walked in these unknown places, and I have returned from them. I understand their dangers, and I’m their equal.” She stands in bold defiance, chin high. “Or is it instead that each King is allowed only to be known for one accomplishment, and you think that his Radiance has already had his zenith simply in ascending to take the throne from his father?”

The stunned silence breaks in an instant, chaos erupting among the gathered advisors. There are objections coming from all sides, from her absolute irreverence toward Carja tradition, to fear for the king’s safety. Aloy’s glance falls back to Avad and she smiles at him, serene in the midst of it all. He has to bite his cheek to keep from returning the smile, instead raising his eyebrows. Then, once he’s allowed the audience a chance to respond, he raises a hand for silence. It comes almost immediately. Much quicker than it normally does, he notes with no small irritation.

“My Vanguard raises an important question,” he says, already well-aware that she’ll have an answer prepared. He almost can’t contain the need to know exactly what it is. “How can you guarantee my safety?”

Aloy doesn’t speak. Instead, she pulls the bundle from her back, unties the cloth, and drops a large chunk of metal to the ground before her. The grooves all along its surface still glow, concentric squares leading inward towards a vividly red-orange center. A few members of the court gasp. The heart of a great Thunderjaw is every bit as impressive as the machine it came from.

“This morning, I took down the Thunderjaw that had been spotted to the southwest.” Her eyes gleam, fierce and proud. “Alone. And as many of you witnessed with your own eyes, I was the one who killed Helis and his Kestrels when they set upon the Temple of the Sun. Also alone. If any of you believe his Radiance would be any less safe with me, traveling in secrecy, than he would with the noise and attention of a party of guards, consider this a challenge. Anyone who thinks they’re up for that can meet me now, in the Sun-Ring. I’ve already spent the morning on the hunt, so that should even the odds a bit.” She rolls the large chunk of metal on the ground before her with a foot, a reminder of exactly what it was that had been her prey.

The whole thing is theatrical, but Avad doesn’t doubt that it’s entirely intentional. Aloy might not have been raised in a court, but she’s spent enough time with the Carja to understand how they feel about ceremony and displays of audacity. This is certainly audacious, though she’s broken the traditional decorum of their ceremonies at least a dozen times. No one rises to meet her challenge.

Avad steps forward, feeling the prickle of all eyes suddenly turning to him. His world, though, has narrowed until Aloy is at its center. “The Sun has heard your request, Aloy, and understands the urgency.” He feels himself start to grin before remembering where he is and the people who surround him, so he forces his expression to one of calm indifference. He knows she sees right through the mask, and that brings him a feeling of peace. “I will make preparations. When will we need to leave?”

Aloy returns his grin, but she makes no effort to hide it. “Tonight.”


	4. Chapter 4

There is a great deal that needs to happen to prepare for a potentially-lengthy journey away from Meridian, especially since the sun has already passed its zenith. Erend accompanies Aloy to what is supposedly a security briefing, but is probably just a chance for the two to catch up. Avad can tell that those closest to the throne are still entirely unsure about him leaving, especially Marad. He meets with the king after Aloy’s dramatic appearance, accompanying him to the solarium for a more private conversation. They go over the key points: the things that Avad will need from his closest advisors, and the role his brother will fulfill in Avad’s absence. Itamen will be fine, they both agree, especially with guidance from Marad, Nasadi, and the Joyful Namman.

While Avad peers into his looking glass, unfamiliar with the reflection that peers back at him from beneath a simple headdress and the armored vest of a Carja outlander, Marad speaks in a quiet voice. “Are you certain about this?”

It seems that there is a double meaning to what his advisor is asking, and Avad pauses, rolling both questions in his mind. Thoughtfully he uses a small brush to paint additional lines around his eyes, knowing that his tattoos alone will come entirely too close to revealing his identity. Becoming an outlander is like a form of theater, where every little detail matters. He closes his eyes to let the paint dry without risk of smudging, then nods to his advisor and friend. 

“I understand that it’s an unusual course of action, but Aloy is right. There’s too much I don’t understand about the world to protect Meridian effectively, and I think it’s time to do something that _isn’t_ usual. Isn’t that the precedent I’ve set for myself, at any rate?” He smiles wryly, turning to face the other man. “Yes, I am more certain about this than I’ve been about anything in a long time.”

That is the best reply he can give, because for the unspoken question, he has no answer. It is dependent on more than _him_ , at any rate. “What do you think?” he asks, spreading his arms wide.

The older man’s mouth twitches into a smile. “Your Luminance, I think you look perfectly dull. Come. Your things are prepared, and your escort is waiting with your family.”

Out in the solarium, a small group has gathered. Aloy he recognizes in an instant – though he is surprised to see that she is sitting in front of Nasadi, the older woman tying her braids back before helping her tuck them beneath a headdress decorated in crimson feathers. Her armor matches his own, the kind that machine-hunting outlanders wear. Clearly, Avad isn’t the only one trying to avoid attention. With her fiery mane loose, Aloy is certainly recognizable. Hidden under the helmet, she blends in, becoming just another Carja hunter.

His eyes skim over the lines painted around her eyes, coming to rest on her lips. They’re parted just slightly, letting the vibrant maroon pigment she’s applied dry. The sight makes his breath catch in his throat, a dull ache forming in his chest where his heart should beat.

Itamen is there, too, speaking earnestly to the huntress. About what, Avad has no idea – but he can see the excitement on his brother’s face, and that alone is enough to fill him with warmth. The boy stops his chattering as soon as Avad is close enough to listen in, so their conversation remains a mystery. 

He is sure, though, that Itamen is feeling anxious about being left to the throne. That is no surprise, considering what he’s gone through with Bahavas and Helis as his advisors. Avad knows his brother is still recovering from having his name associated with atrocities that went against his very nature. Itamen will not be pushed into that sort of situation now, or indeed ever again. He needs to be reassured that he has the ability to speak out against any royal decree. The boy glances from Avad to his mother for confirmation, and when she nods, Itamen practically runs to his side. He wraps his arms around his brother’s waist, burying his face against his stomach. In response Avad lifts him into a tight hug. 

It’s probably an action that goes against all propriety, but the king doesn’t care. This is his little brother, after all, and the only other people in attendance are family or near enough to it – plus Aloy, and Avad is sure the open display of affection won’t bother her.

“My brother, you are stronger than you realize,” he says quietly, setting Itamen down and crouching so that he can look him in the eyes. He cups Itamen’s face in his hand, soft. “I trust you. As long as you’re here, Meridian is safe.”

The boy bites at his lower lip, his chin trembling a bit. To his credit, though, he doesn’t look away, and his voice is clear when he speaks. “You promise you’ll come back? I don’t think I want to be king.” 

Simple a statement as it is, it sends a little pang of guilt through Avad. He nods gravely. “You have my word.” It’s a sentiment he understands all too well, but he has the ability to ensure his brother isn’t ever pushed into the same position he once found himself in. “Don’t be afraid. I’ll be with Aloy, you know how ferocious she is.” That makes his brother smile. Avad is aware that Nasadi has come to stand beside them, and he nods up at her. It is an unspoken discussion: This is an oath, something that runs deep in their shared blood. He stands to face her, and is caught off-guard when she presses something into his hands.

It is a wooden box that fits comfortably in his hands, its deep hickory wood carved with simple patterns that he knows as if they were the glyphs of his own name. Suddenly, he feels lightheaded with the weight of nostalgia pressing down on him. His stepmother looks at him intensely, and he holds the box close to his chest. “Where did you find…” he cuts himself off, shaking his head quickly. Where she found it doesn’t matter, only that it’s with him again. He is aware that Aloy is watching them with a fierce curiosity, and that makes heat rise to his face. He hopes that his tan hides it. “Nasadi… Thank you.”

“Let it be a reminder,” she says quietly. “Stay true to yourself, Avad Khane Araman. It has done our people so much good in the past. Sun willing, it will continue to do so for years to come.”

He leans in, kisses each of her cheeks in turn, and then gives her a small smile. “Walk in the light, mother.” Then, he raises his head, looking up at Aloy. 

The huntress is standing and waiting patiently, but he can see the way she is absently fingering at the strap of her pack. She is ready to go and likely has been for some time now. “You ready?” She nods at another pack sitting beside her. “Erend and I went over your things, they’re all set.”

When he lifts the heavy pack, he finds it’s been well balanced – the weight is evenly distributed over his shoulders, with no pressure on any one part of his back. It is almost comforting. He is sure that given time he’ll have a very different opinion, but for now, he’s too distracted by the anxious excitement of what the weight actually means. He is leaving Meridian. For the first time in his _life,_ without terror nipping at his heels and pushing him to the border, he might even be leaving the Sundom. He feels almost dizzy with the realization. “Yeah.” Quickly, he corrects himself. “Yes. Where are we going?”

Aloy gives him a crooked grin. “To the market. You’ve got unsold wares to transport, after all.”

* * *

The plan she’s devised with Marad is a simple one, and in that, it’s ingenious. In the market, a few members of the Vanguard have left a crate loaded with fruit for them. Among the apples and oranges, Aloy has tucked an extra bundle of food that will last them on the road, things that aren’t readily available outside of Meridian: plantains cooked in a kettle until they crunch and tossed in salt, dried meats and fruit, and crushed grain that they can mix with water and cook over a fire to make a thin bread. Once Avad has picked up the crate, they set off.

Aloy can tell that he is feeling more than a little apprehensive over the crowds that are joining them in their trip out of the city, but it is those same crowds that will provide the cover she is looking for. In the midst of all that humanity, a pair of hunters moving goods into the outlands are hardly worthy of as much as a first glance.

All the same, Avad is quiet as they join in with the flow of human traffic on the bridge. With the elevators still under construction, it is even busier than she could have hoped for.

The last traces of sunlight paint the sandstone of the valley a vivid, glowing red. Aloy bumps her shoulder against Avad’s, grinning to herself. “First day on this job, eh?” she says, lighthearted. “Don’t worry. I’ve been on this patrol for months, it’s not too bad.”

A brief moment of confusion passes over his features but he quickly recovers from it. “I heard there was a Thunderjaw near the road,” he says slowly, trying out the act. “Someone really needs to do something about that.”

“I keep telling the nobles they should gather shards to hire the Lodge for it, but they’re stingy bastards, aren’t they?” She’s walking slowly, leisurely. A rogue Nora sneaking the Carja king out of the city might be in a hurry, but these outlanders take their time. They have no need to push through the river of workers on their way home for the evening. Avad, to his credit, keeps pace with her, even if she can feel the anxiety washing off him in waves. She shares in some of his desire to be out of the press of bodies, but for an entirely different reason. She never got used to being around this many people all in the same place, and her months of self-enforced solitude haven’t helped matters on that front.

Aloy is aware that he is glancing at her out of the corner of his eye, but when she catches his gaze he quickly looks ahead again. “Maybe I should petition the king? He must know someone that can take care of it.”

It’s all she can do not to laugh. “Maybe you should.”

At the end of the bridge, the sea of bodies crawls to a stop where it should instead be dispersing, and confused irritation needles at her. Avad is like a jumpy Lancehorn, the last thing she needs is for something to spook him. Then she sees the figure of a Sun-Priest standing on a makeshift pulpit made of several empty barrels. His vermillion robes gleam in the sunset, arms outstretched as if to catch the light, and his voice rises clean and clear in song. She’s ready to push her way through the crowd so that they can pick up the trail down to the valley floor, but Avad has stopped. He’s watching the priest with his face upturned, quiet and still. As the hymn draws to an end, the sunlight fading to cast the priest’s face in shadow, he turns to face the gathered workers.

“May the Sun’s last rays warm you through the night, and its first light guide your path back to Meridian,” he says. Around them, there are quiet murmurs of praise. It’s all deeply unfamiliar to her, but she’s able to watch without the immediate discomfort of being the center of attention. The priest continues, “Where we are blessed with closeness to his Luminance, and to his holy Radiance which shines onto all Carja faithful across the Sundom.”

Next to her, Avad blanches, taking a step back. He bumps into the man standing behind him, and it’s only Aloy’s hand on his back that keeps him from knocking into another artisan when he turns to leave in a rush. “Sorry,” she says to the man quickly, gripping the back of Avad’s vest to guide him to the side. “He’s afraid of the moon, gotta get home before it comes out. You know how it is.”

The Carja’s face says that he doesn’t, but by then Aloy’s managed to get Avad out of the gathering. When they’ve put a little distance between themselves and the crowd, she directs him to set the crate down. She retrieves one bundle of food, strapping it to her pack and passing him the second. Then, she nods to the road where it weaves back on itself to lead to the valley’s densely-forested floor. “I’d like to put some distance between us and the main roads,” she says as they make their way into the muggy dark between trees. “Then we’ll set up a camp for the evening. If we head out close to dawn, we can make good progress, but we’re going to be sticking away from populated areas so we probably won’t come across too many other people, if any.” 

Avad nods without question. She’s a little perturbed by his quiet, frustrated with her inability to put his mind at ease. Even more frustrating is the building desperation to say _something_ , because the idea that their journey might come to an end before it’s really even begun is almost unbearable. She hadn’t realized how badly she needed to share her experiences with someone, but especially Avad, until the casual blessing of a priest seems to have put her on the cusp of losing that opportunity.

Instead, she focuses on leading him through the underbrush. A raccoon chitters at them angrily from the shadow of a tree’s branches, and other noises of the forest’s animals build to a crescendo in the gathering dusk. The ground is muddy from winter rains, and in the cooling air condensation drips heavy from the leaves of trees high above them. Finally, they come to a clearing and she waves for him to stop. A recent treefall has torn a gap in the canopy above, opening a perfect window of stars above the forest floor. The Grazers and Lancehorns of the jungle will move through the area soon to break up the tree’s remains, creating room for new saplings that will take hold and fill in the space until there’s no memory that any void ever existed. For now, though, it’s the perfect place to set up camp.

Aloy drops her pack and unstraps her bedroll in a practiced motion. Behind her, Avad has followed her lead, setting his pack down quite a bit more carefully. Then he sits on the fallen log. “I don’t really want to start a fire as long as we’re so close to the city,” she says, as much to herself as to him. She’s spent so long traveling on her own that it takes an effort to remember that she needs to explain her thinking. “But if you get too cold, wake me and I’ll get one started.” 

She glances at where Avad is sitting, his fingertips steepled before him. His lips have drawn into a thin line, and he raises his eyes to her. “I will. Thank you.”

There’s worry in every line of him, a vulnerability that makes her squirm. The weight of his responsibility must be heavier than she really took into account. What she’s been too lost in the giddy potential of her plan and its success to consider fully is that while she’s fought tooth and nail against being venerated as an authority by her tribe, Avad is long past that point. Whatever his thoughts about his station might be, he has a level of responsibility that is staggering, even to her. She sits beside him, fidgeting as she tries to find the right words, something she can say to help soothe him. Finally, she sighs. “Avad,” she begins, leaning forward to rest her arms on her knees. “Do you remember what you told me before? That change might only happen if people like me help you? This is… this is a part of that. There’s so much that you can’t learn from secondhand accounts. What you’re doing now, for Meridian, it’s… important.”

It’s important to Meridian, yes, to make sure the most powerful tribe in the world doesn’t follow in the path of the Old Ones. But it’s also important to her – that someone, anyone, can share the truth with her. That someone actually _wants_ to share it with her. She sighs and leans back. But when she looks at Avad again, the corner of his mouth has twitched into a lopsided smile she can just make out in the darkness, and that’s enough to set that frantic flutter back into her chest. She looks away from him quickly, as if he’ll be able to see the near-desperation she feels, and that he’ll judge her for it. “Anyway. We should set up camp. There are a lot of travelers on the road this close to the city, so the more ground we can cover tomorrow the better.”

From the way he shifts, she can tell he has a thousand questions for her. To his credit, though, he doesn’t ask them. “Of course. Interesting as I’m sure it would be I’m not really looking to hold court in the jungle.” 

Relief washes over her as the tension drains from him. “I thought you loved courtiers?” 

“Oh, deeply,” Avad makes a face, turning to unbundle his bedroll. “Did you hear the latest? There’s a baker who is charging too many shards, and the baker’s competition is charging too _few_ and getting more than his fair share of the business. It’s exactly the kind of conflict a king is needed to settle.”

She can’t help it. She snorts, pulling her arrow-making kit from her bag. “You’d better think up a strongly-worded letter about the price of buns while I gather some wood, then. That’s the kind of trouble that’ll keep a man awake at night.”

Luckily, in the depths of the jungle, wood isn’t exactly hard to come by. She finds a cluster of ridge-wood growing a few hundred yards from their campsite, and she has the luxury of picking the straightest branches to make new arrows. The rest will make good kindling – she has a few small vials of Blaze that she can use to start a fire even in the damp of the jungle. In any case, there’s a little chill to the air, but she doubts they’ll need it. The thought of climbing into her bed, out beneath the stars and away from city noise, puts quickness into her step. She hasn’t wanted to show it, but she’s _exhausted._ Once she’s satisfied with the lengths of wood she’s gathered, she walks a wide circle around the camp. Quickly, she sets traps along the perimeter, because while she hasn’t noticed any roaming machines in the area it’s a precaution she feels more comfortable taking. 

After she’s double-checked the area with her Focus, she makes her way back to the camp. When the clearing opens in front of her, she hesitates. Avad is still setting up his bed, which both entertains and confuses her, because it’s not that complicated even for someone who’s never done it before. What gives her pause, though, is not amusement. Instead, it’s the sight of him like this: out of the trappings of the palace and wearing the clothes of a common Carja outlander, struggling to decide how best to arrange his pillow and blankets. It humanizes him in a way she’d not realized he needed to be humanized. But until now, she’d always thought of him as Sun-King Avad instead of, simply, Avad. 

It’s a realization that makes shame burn at her cheeks and she’s grateful for his distraction and the cover of night. In that moment she resolves to make sure she doesn’t make that kind of mistake again. Quickly, she shakes herself from her thoughts. “We’re set for the night,” she comments to Avad’s turned back, dropping the bundle of collected branches just a few paces from the sleeping area.

The man nearly jumps out of his skin when she speaks, scrambling for his pack. He spins to face her, machine-steel blade bright in his hands, then freezes when he sees it’s only her. Breath escaping in a short sigh, he sags back against the fallen tree. “By the Sun, Aloy, you scared me half to death!”

“Imagine if I’d been trying to be quiet,” she says, amused. “You can put that away now that you’ve protected the camp.” She inclines her head toward where his hand has fallen to his side, still clutching his knife. Honestly, she’s pleasantly surprised by his instincts – that he doesn’t make a sound in response to being startled but goes instead for a weapon makes her regard him thoughtfully. That’s when she notices that the reason it’s taken him so long to set up his own bedroll is that he’s taken the time to set hers up for her.

It’s such a little thing, something he’d do that should surprise her less than his instinct to reach for a knife. But it’s the kind of gesture that she’s never experienced that she can remember, and she’s left struggling to find the right way to respond. “It’s the least I could do to help,” he says quickly, setting his knife beside his bedroll. “Considering I’m not much of a survivalist.”

There’s a rueful quality to his voice, his lips twisted in a wry smile. Aloy watches him closely, feeling like her throat is closing up. Carefully she takes a seat on the pile of furs that’s waiting for her. “Avad, I… I appreciate it.” He glances at her out of the corner of his eye, dipping his head in a quick nod, before going back to moving his pillow. Content that she’s done all she needs for the night, she lets herself fall back into her bedroll.

Exhaustion floods her again, her eyelids going heavy the second her head hits the bed. She’s still thrilling in the novelty of not having to set up her own bedroll and the strange gratitude she’s feeling, and she wraps herself in her blankets. Sure, the down-feather bed in Meridian had been more comfortable. But this is familiar, even if being out in the wilds with _company_ is less so. “We’ll pack up camp just after dawn,” she says as she turns onto her side to face Avad. 

He’s finally given up on the pillow, and has straightened to shrug out of his armored vest, folding it neatly over his forearms, oblivious to her gaze. Something in her twists at the sight of his back, bare in the cool light of the moon. When she realizes she’s staring she quickly turns to look up at the stars, shoving her fascination down deep into herself, embarrassment rising hot in its place. She can hear as he follows her lead and is climbing into his bedroll, cloth rustling with his movements. Sleep tugs at her, her blankets quickly gathering her body heat, surrounding her in a cocoon of warmth. When she opens her eyes again, she can just see the impression of his face, turned toward her. “Wake me if you need anything.”

“I will,” he replies, from what feels like very far away. “Good night.”

“Sleep well, Avad.” She closes her eyes, letting the sounds of the forest wash over her, sleep nipping at her thoughts, slowing them to a crawl. She can feel herself drifting off.

“…Aloy?”

Avad’s voice is so quiet she’s not sure if she’s dreamed it. She turns, blinking in his general direction. “Mm?”

“Thank you.”

In the dark Aloy presses a smile against her pillow, hidden from the world, because her joy is a bird that she wants to keep to herself for just a little longer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i drew the idiot brigade as outlanders!  
> https://radiant-avad.tumblr.com/post/185722291698/two-of-them-playing-with-mixing-armor-sets-to-make


	5. Chapter 5

It’s amazing how quickly Aloy falls asleep, and it’s hard not to be at least a little jealous when he’s been so tired for so long. Avad had hoped that his insomnia would be as easily treated as hers, but it turns out he's not quite that lucky. Out here, he understands the complaint she’d had with the city at night. The lack of ambient noise makes him uncomfortably aware of the ringing pulse in his ears that's plagued him since Dervahl's attempt on his life. The jungle is too quiet to drown that sound out and he has to sit with it, anxiety rising at the back of his throat.

So he inhales the cool night air, exhaling in slow measured breaths that he matches with the beating of his heart. Through the window of trees the stars stretch above him, brighter than he can ever remember seeing them before. 

They’re beautiful, achingly so, but he’s having a hard time keeping his gaze on them. 

As he finally calms the ringing seems to sink back from the forefront of his mind. He closes his eyes, focusing on the way his blankets feel. It’s a far cry from his bed back at the palace, and it’s a little challenging figuring out the best way to position his body. On his side, facing toward Aloy, seems to be the most comfortable, but that opens him to the other issue keeping him almost painfully alert. His jealousy has evaporated along with his anxiety – but instead he’s left filled with an emotion he doesn’t even have words for, let alone knowledge about how to calm it for sleep.

This isn’t a situation he’s ever allowed himself to so much as _dream_ he’d be in. Even then, it’s unlikely he’d ever imagine something so objectively absurd. Deep in the jungles of the Sundom, beneath the stars, he is laying sleepless in a bedroll across from the machine hunter who’s all but become a legend among his people. He has no idea exactly what she has planned for them in the coming days, but for the first time in his life, that uncertainty doesn’t frighten him.

When next he opens his eyes, he jerks upright. The sky above is no longer filled with stars and has instead taken on the pale blue-grey hue before the dawn. He’s briefly overwhelmed by confusion. He has no idea when he finally drifted to sleep, but he can tell that he won’t be getting any more before it’s time to break down camp. Sighing, frustrated, he massages at his ears. By now, the air is filled with the chittering notes of birdsong and it’s more than enough to keep the ringing to the back of his mind. Then he takes stock of their camp now in the light of morning.

The fallen tree stretches out for a few dozen paces, and its collapse has carved a long scar through the canopy. That suits him – it will give him access to the first rays of light when the Sun clears the horizon. Across from him Aloy is still fast asleep, the rhythmic rise and fall of her breathing the only sign that the lump under the blankets belongs to anything living.

Embarrassed to have been watching her, he climbs out of his bedroll and picks up his pack, then climbs up onto the fallen tree. He sits still for a moment, crouched so that his fingertips brush the rough bark.

At first, he feels a small thrill at the texture, so different from the polished luxuries of the city. How long has it been since he’s just been allowed to enjoy things? What he said the previous night about being useful in any way he could was true, of course, but it runs so much deeper than that. When had he last made his _own_ bed, let alone someone else’s? It’s strange, this freedom, but he decides to embrace it. After this trip things will go back to his version of normal, so he might as well let himself enjoy the little things. He straightens, filling his lungs with cool morning air, and then walks along the top of the makeshift path toward the clearing.

There’s still some time before the dawn breaks, though the sky is gradually lightening. Avad finds the bundle of wood that Aloy had brought back to their camp, and he gathers some of the thin reeds and twigs. The ground here is flat and not too littered with leaves, so he spreads out the tinder.

It’s been so long since he’s made a fire that he wonders if he’s ever actually done it or only read about the different techniques. He goes off those memories, trying to lay out the smaller twigs in a way that’ll help the larger branches catch. In his pack is a bundle that contains a steep-walled metal pan and a few vials of Blaze, and as soon as he’s satisfied with the woodpile, he shakes a few drops of the viscous green liquid onto the wood.

The second he strikes a few sparks from a flint, flames leap to life. His breath catches in his throat as he waits to see if it will go out as soon as the Blaze has burned off.

It continues to burn, flames dancing merrily.

Such a little thing to be so proud of, but Avad beams down at his work all the same. He fills the pan with water from a skin, then uses another branch to hold up over the heat. Someone, most likely either Marad or Nasadi, has tucked a bundle of tea in his bag. It’s the kind of thoughtful gesture that fills him with gratitude, not least of all because after another night of truncated sleep, he needs the boost. He holds the little bag to his nose, breathing in the rich floral scent, noting the spice of Wild Ember mingling with rose and something fruity. It’s a blend that takes him back to the years before the worst of his father’s madness, before Itamen’s birth, when Nasadi was a new addition to their family. _Definitely her touch_ , he thinks, smiling against the canvas. In what feels like no time at all he’s holding a cup of freshly-steeped tea, back turned to the little fire so that he can face the opening in the trees that looks to the east.

Almost lazily, the Sun crests the horizon, and its first light crawls over his bare skin. The warmth is thin in the winter light, but it’s a welcome sensation regardless. “Hello, my friend,” Avad says quietly, bringing the cup to his face to inhale the rich, floral aroma. “At least one of us found some rest.”

Through the dawn he’s left to the quiet and his thoughts, sipping his tea as soon as it’s cooled to a drinkable temperature. In the coolness of the morning, he’s even more appreciative of its heat. Once his cup has been emptied he returns to the fire to add more water, but movement from the camp gives him pause. Aloy is walking along the top of the tree towards him, red hair a wild nest around her head that seems to glow in the light that makes its way through the trees. His heart catches in his throat for an instant at the sight before he remembers himself. “Good morning,” Avad greets, holding his cup out for her. “Tea?”

“Thank you,” Aloy murmurs, taking the cup from him. She holds it to her nose, breathes deep, and exhales with a little sigh. “It smells wonderful. What is it?”

Avad picks up the canvas sack that contains the rest of the tea, pouring a little into his hand and holding it out for her inspection. “It isn’t a purely herbal blend, so there are tea leaves for energy. But the rest is grown at the palace gardens – rose, dried strawberry, and Wild Ember.” Aloy’s eyebrows shoot up for a moment as she regards the cup, studiously avoiding his gaze, and Avad blinks. He thinks he sees just a little color on her cheeks, but it’s gone before he can be certain. “Is… there a problem?”

Taking another sniff of the beverage, she shakes her head. “No, not at all. It’s just that we always used Wild Ember in medicine.” She takes a shallow sip, testing both the temperature and the flavor. Her eyes light up, and she takes a much deeper sip, turning to Avad with wide eyes. “Oh! It’s good!”

That makes him laugh. “Are you really that surprised? Well, I suppose my taste isn’t all bad.”

“Quiet, you,” she scolds. Behind the cup, she’s grinning. “I’ve just never had Wild Ember prepared like this before.”

It’s a fair point. Avad takes a seat on the log, and Aloy sits beside him, each soaking in both the warmth of the sun on their backs and from the little fire before them. “I like the spice of it, but it needs something extra to temper the bitterness.” 

Looking thoughtfully into the flames, Aloy nods. He reaches for the bundle of cooking supplies that he’s brought to the fire, pulling out the sack of dried meat and fruit. It’s a modest selection, but more than sufficient to break their fast on. “So,” he begins, conversational now that she’s settled with a cup of tea and a handful of dried berries. “Where are we going?”

With her foot, Aloy clears the ground in front of them. Then she uses a branch to draw a crude map. Meridian she marks with a little sun, and their current location, with a cross. Then, to the northeast of them, she draws a little circle. Avad’s eyebrows shoot up. “Daytower?”

“Exactly.” She taps the end of the branch in the rich soil. “It’s a good place to pick up some supplies.”

Avad chews on a bit of dried turkey, thoughtful. There’s definitely something symbolic about starting their journey there, but he’s a little concerned about moving through any major outposts. Despite Marad’s attention to his disguise’s detail, it would only take one person recognizing him to stir up trouble. Besides that, he’d assumed they’d left Meridian with everything they needed. “Supplies for…?”

She reaches toward him, and he breaks a strip of meat off for her – but when he passes it to her, she seizes his hand instead. He almost jumps at the sudden touch. Her hands, warmed by the hot mug, seem to light little fires under his skin. She brushes her thumbs across his palms, then squeezes his hand. Almost instinctively he returns the squeeze, mouth going dry.

“You’re not much of a climber, are you?” She releases her hold, a smile twisting her lips as she sits back again. Avad’s heart is aflutter in his throat, and he wordlessly shakes his head. “Hmm. I think I can work with that.” 

Befuddled, he looks down at his hand, like he can read her mind through the creases she brushed her fingertips across. “Aloy, what in the name of the Sun are you planning?” He raises his eyes and frowns at her. “Or is it some kind of surprise?”

“Do you want it to be?” Aloy’s expression is perfectly mischievous.

It’s not exactly the response he was expecting, and he hesitates. He’s been looking for information, for answers, for so long, and now he’s finally in a position to get them. Looking at Aloy, though, he feels content in a way he never has before. The mystery is more exciting than it is frustrating, and with the touch of drama she’s already provided, he finds that he trusts her. To rush this little adventure, whatever its eventual goal, is unthinkable. “I… I think that I do,” he says, feeling a little foolish.

But it’s the right answer, because she’s radiating excitement. “Okay,” she says, setting the empty mug down beside her. “Okay. This is going to be fun.”

Exactly what, he still doesn’t know. But he’s inclined to agree.

* * *

That day, Aloy sets a grueling pace. There isn’t much time for them to speak – it’s more exercise than he’s had in years, and he’d never been the most athletic member of his family to begin with. Atop the flat lands surrounding the great basin that holds Meridian, they stop to set up camp. The location is ideal, nestled in near a lazy river and a cliff face that acts as a windbreak. The sun is still weakly lighting the sky, but the air has taken on a biting chill. In the shadows, little patches of snow are proof enough that winter’s grip is holding tight, even on the lightening end of the solstice. 

Once they’ve set up their bedrolls among the rocks and Aloy has left to procure something to eat, Avad walks a short distance to fill their waterskins at a stream that feeds into the river. There the water runs cool and swift, and is safe for them to drink. He pauses and looks down into his broken reflection in the rushing water. 

This is a good opportunity to clear his head. He glances back toward the campsite, seeing no trace of Aloy’s figure in the growing dark. A quick cast-around confirms that he is completely alone, knelt on the banks of the creek. Impulsive, he presses his palm flat against his mouth and closes his eyes. The memory of her fingertips has left a brand on his skin and when he thinks of the strength in her grip, his pulse quickens.

For a moment, Avad is absolutely lost in the memory.

Once he’s splashed some ice-cold water on his face, he climbs up onto a rocky outcropping above the clear water. From here, he has a breathtaking view of the Sundom, Meridian shining like a jewel in the setting Sun. 

It’s beautiful in a way he’s never experienced it. Scarred as it may be from  years of strife, seeing the seat of the Carja like this fills him with pride. He stands there until the last traces of red have vanished from the stone below, fading to pink in the sky above. It’s only then that he makes his meandering way back to the place he’d left Aloy. 

There’s a fire crackling at the campsite, and when he approaches, the rich smell of cooking meat fills the air. His stomach growls, and he’s suddenly very aware that he hasn’t had a proper meal all day. Aloy is perched on a rock close to the fire and spit she’s prepared, looking into the middle distance and frowning. She moves her hand in front of her face as though she’s shooing off an insect he can’t see, her lips moving without sound. It makes a part of him he’d hoped to be rid of years ago tighten with anxiety. When she turns her head, though, he sees a flicker of light at her temple, the little metal device she’s always worn emitting a soft blue glow. The light goes out quickly when she sees him walking toward her.

“I worried you’d gotten lost,” she greets him, but she’s smiling.

He sets the waterskins down, going to sit beside her. There’s a plump duck roasting over the fire, and the smell of it makes his mouth water. “Not even I am that hopeless,” he replies, eyeing her out of the corner of his eye. “Please tell me that will be ready soon. I considered eating my boot leather on the way back.”

“Well, it looks like your boots will live to see another day.” Using a knife, she carves a strip of meat off the breast and passes it to him.

It’s savory and succulent, and he barely resists the urge to sigh at the flavor. “By the Sun, Aloy, that is delicious.”

In the flickering firelight it’s hard for him to be sure, but it looks like a flush goes across her face. “Well, it’ll be even better in a few more minutes. Try not to eat any of our gear until then.”

The mention of their supplies gives him an idea, and he holds up a finger to pause their discussion while he gathers a few things. When he returns to the fireside, it’s with the cooking pan and a bottle in hand. Aloy watches him with unrestrained curiosity as he sets the pan down, in which he’s stowed their cups and a little bundle. She reaches for the bundle, unwrapping it. Inside, there are some spices, dried blueberries, and currants.

While she inspects the ingredients he’s brought to her, he uses the camp knife to strike the top of the bottle – cork and all – off. Then, with a flourish, he pours wine into the pan along with some of the berries and spices. As he sets it back over the fire, Aloy leans back, the light dancing in her eyes. “I didn’t know you were a chef.”

“Well then, it seems we’re both learning something new about me.” That makes her snort, and he’s grinning too. He leans over the pan, takes a sniff – it’s sweet, heady from the wine, with just a touch of heat from the spice mix’s dried pepper flakes. “I did say we would be having a feast together, didn’t I?”

“I suppose you did,” Aloy replies, turning her attention back to the duck. She pokes at it with her knife, then pulls it from the heat. “Well, chef, if that sauce is ready then we can eat.”

Avad pours some of the remaining wine in both of their cups. Aloy takes hers from his extended hand. “To Aloy, Annointed of the Nora, Defender of Meridian, and chieftain-in-absentia of the Song’s Edge Werak.”

There’s that darkening of her cheeks, a shy smile. She holds up her own cup, lightly tapping the rim against his. “And to His Radiance Avad, the Fourteenth Ruler of the Carja, Liberator of Meridian, and… somehow not a Grazer’s ass, despite all of that.”

He laughs aloud, and Aloy snorts a giggle into her hand. “To us, a pair of over-achievers, then.” He takes a sip of his wine to try and hide how silly he feels, and the lightness that’s bubbling up in his chest. 

The sauce is, to his surprise and pleasure, delicious, and serves as a perfect counterpoint to the unctuous meat. They sit side-by-side, dipping strips of duck into the sauce.  Avad is absolutely ravenous from a day on the road, and when they’ve eaten their meal down to the bones, he leans back with a satisfied sigh. “Sun above, I’m glad the leaves were wrong about Nora cooking.”

“How’s that?” Aloy says, but the way she’s grinning tells him that she probably already knows the answer, but wants to hear it from him.

He wonders if the wine is going too much to his head, but he’s surprised by how comfortable he feels. “Well, to start with, that you all eat nothing but trees.”

She snorts a little giggle. “I wouldn’t be a very good Nora even if that _was_ the case.” As if proving the point, she uses a finger to scoop up a little of the leftover sauce. She looks up at him, a sparkle in her eye. “We were wrong about Carja eating habits too, though.”

“Oh?”

“I’d always been taught that you eat sunlight and water.” She pauses to lick the sauce off her finger, then grins at him. “Like trees.”

Avad doesn’t know what his face shows, but whatever it is, it makes Aloy burst into laughter. “I can think of worse ways to die,” he mutters, staring intently into the fire.

When he glances up at her again, her eyes are shining – and there’s a blush on her cheeks that puts the heat he feels in his own face to shame. “What would Marad say if he heard you?”

“Marad isn’t here,” Avad retorts, and when she starts to giggle, he laughs in response. Really, truly laughs, so that his shoulders shake from it. How long has it been since he’s laughed like this? There’s no undercurrent of fear or close memory of horror cutting through it, no pressure from his station. There’s just him, Aloy, and a cup of wine he thinks perhaps wasn’t the best idea for the sake of decorum, but decorum can be damned.

Avad is happy.

But he also knows that he needs to remember himself and rein it in, even if he can’t stop smiling. “So – what’s on the agenda for tomorrow?”

For the briefest moment, he thinks he sees a shadow of something like disappointment in Aloy’s gaze, but all the same, she’s still smiling. It’s a genuine smile, and that’s enough for him. Whatever that shadow was, he knows it’s foolish to dwell on. “We’ll continue north. There’s a herd of Tramplers close to the trail I want to take but it’s the quickest way for us to go, so we’re going to see how sneaky you can be.”

There’s that grin, the clear challenge she’s giving him. Something in him feels absolutely terrified at the idea of trying to sneak through a group of machines that have a reputation for being unpredictably deadly. Terror, it turns out, is a neighbor to excitement. He meets her grin with a nod. “Well, I’ve been full of surprises so far, so we’ll just have to see if that continues to be the case.”

“We will,” Aloy replies, leaning back against a rock and fiddling absently with her quiver. “For now, you should try to get some rest. I’m going to set up a perimeter, if you don’t need anything else.”

He doesn’t, and so leaves him to extinguish the fire and clean up from their meal. Once that’s finished, he sets up both of their beds – just to see that flicker of gratitude in her eyes when she returns, the smile she gives warming him even in the chill night air. Again, she drops almost immediately into sleep, while Avad pulls his blankets up close around him. He tracks the slow march of the moon above, mind buzzing too loudly to let him drift off.

This time, though, it isn’t fear or anxiety keeping him awake. He doesn’t try to quiet his thoughts but instead lets himself be bundled up in them, more comfortable than any blankets. They’re too light, too happy, to waste on sleep. Instead, Avad watches the stars and listens to the quiet pulsing drum of his own heart, wrapped in a tingly coat of giddiness. When sleep does find him, long into the night, he’s still smiling.


	6. Chapter 6

The next few days fall into an easy rhythm: Avad wakes early, before Aloy, and prepares a meal far enough from the camp that he doesn’t disturb her. Along with breakfast is tea, which he brews for her without fail once he's learned that she has a taste for it. He packs up camp, then, while Aloy gathers up the traps set the previous evening and consults her Focus to map their route.

Then, for as long as they have daylight, she pushes them hard. From the time that they leave camp in the morning until the sun is just barely visible above the horizon, Aloy is entirely dedicated to covering as much ground as possible. She’s already making concessions on speed for Avad’s comfort and she’s eager to make up for it as much as possible – if it was her alone, she’d be traveling after dark as well.

But she isn’t alone, not anymore.

It’s a curious thing, traveling with a companion. Especially one like Avad, who is constantly surprising her. He has no real knowledge about living on the trail, but he’s under no mistaken beliefs about his abilities. He _knows_ that he’s less capable in the wilds than the average Nora six-year-old, and the only reason that it seems to bother him at all is that he doesn’t want to slow Aloy down. He tries to stay out of her way when it comes to hunting and foraging, instead taking over the more mundane tasks of setting up camp, building fires, and cooking whatever food she brings him. It gives her a great deal of freedom to take care of her gear and set traps. Increasingly dangerously, it also gives her time to think.

It’s in the evenings, after they’ve eaten and before sleep pulls her beneath its thick blanket, that she’s the most aware of his presence. In the fading glow of their fire, burned down to coals that Avad rearranges to maximize the heat they’ll provide throughout the night, Aloy studies him. Distracted, his eyes lowered and lips pressed into a thoughtful line, he doesn’t catch the raw emotion on her face. Each night, there’s a part of her that doesn’t want to sleep, an unfamiliar fluttering in the pit of her stomach. She thinks of a bird in a trap, wings beating hard out of a desperate need to take to the sky.

Without fail, when he raises his gaze she looks away again or pretends to already be asleep. She wills that bird to stay quiet and still, pleads with it to slow its frantic flapping. If it doesn’t, he’s sure to notice.

Exhaustion, inevitably, is what saves her.

A new dawn comes, light falling soft and warm on Aloy’s face, and she swims into wakefulness and a day that is the perfect match to those that have come so far. The quiet sounds of the lake they’d set up near the previous evening drift over her, birdsong filling the air. Even this late in the season, it’s far warmer here than anywhere else she’s been in months, and she sighs contentedly as she stretches the sleep out of her joints. It’s a picturesque morning in every sense.

It doesn’t surprise her when she finds she’s alone in the camp. It’s just after the break of dawn, and a quick activation of her Focus over Avad’s empty bed casts his trail in purple light. It loops through their camp toward the far end of the lake, then doubles back on itself – she already knows what she can expect to find at its end but she follows the impressions of his feet in the soft earth regardless, smiling to herself. Sure enough, sitting beside her pack is her cup, tea still steaming. Aloy climbs out of her blankets to retrieve it, breathing in the spicy aroma. Then she turns her attention to the rest of the camp.

At first, she wonders if she should use this moment to herself as an opportunity to start to clear out. It’s what she probably should do, at any rate. But it isn’t what she _wants_ to do, so she instead follows her heart and the path indicated by her Focus.

At the end of the trail she finds Avad. He’s standing on a rocky outcropping on the far side of the lake, where the view of the sunrise isn’t obstructed, a fire set up near him. But she’ll have to consider that more later, because she’s briefly overcome by surprise. Avad, without vest or shirt, isn’t facing the sun. Instead, he’s positioned himself with his bow raised, an arrow sighted toward the water.

When she approaches, taking care to make  as much noise as possible to keep from startling him too badly, he lowers the weapon and looks at her over his shoulder. “Good morning,” he greets, and she isn’t sure if she’s imagining it, but he looks bashful. About what, she can’t be certain, but she suspects it has to do with his form. Which is a reasonable thing to be bashful of, she thinks, amused. “Is your tea still hot? I can brew you a new cup.”

A valiant attempt to redirect her attention, she notes to herself, but it isn’t going to work. “You’re spoiling me,” she replies with a smile, climbing up onto the rock beside him. Then, she sits near to the fire, at a safe distance from his shooting so that she can watch. Raising her cup to her lips, she nods toward his lowered bow. “Don’t let me interrupt you.”

There’s that sheepish look again, but to his credit, he turns back toward the water. As he nocks an arrow, he speaks, clearly nervous about being watched. “I had been thinking that since you’ve been hunting for us every day, I would try to catch something – ah, _damn–_!” His loosed arrow skates parallel to the surface of the water, remarkably coming to rest so that it’s floating. Aloy doesn’t think she’s ever seen anything quite like it before, and it takes every bit of willpower not to laugh out loud. “…In any case, I hope you aren’t too hungry. It might be some time.”

“I don’t mind.” He draws another arrow, pulls, fires. This one doesn’t skip across the surface but she can tell the angle just isn’t right – surreptitiously she Focuses to sight his target. He’s not accounting for the way water will pull on the arrow as soon as it hits the surface. Even an otherwise-solid shot will be knocked aside by that force, and there’s no way he’ll be able to line up a hit. 

Something about his stance isn’t quite right either, and she watches him reach for an arrow out of his nearly-empty quiver thoughtfully. On impulse she stands and moves behind him. Immediately he stiffens, but she pushes that thought aside to focus on the task at hand. “More like this,” she directs, and then she puts her hands over his.

Their draw length is different, of course, but with her hands on his forearms she’s able to change the way he’s holding the bow. “You’re too stiff, Avad, you need to use your whole body when you shoot,” she says, softly. “Turn your hips just a little – that’s too far, lean back into me. Good. Better, anyway.”

Avad glances at her over his shoulder, tongue nervously wetting his lower lip. “I was trained to stand perpendicular to–”

“For some people, that would be true. But you’re fighting your natural stance when you do that. Now, lift.”

When he raises the bow, her hands glide over his arms, guiding him into proper form. “Inhale while you draw and hold to aim,” she instructs, calm. Standing here she can just see the shape of a large fish that’s lazily gliding below the surface. She gently adjusts his positioning. “Remember the effect the water will have on your shot. Good. Now…”

She doesn’t have to finish the statement, because Avad releases. The arrow flies like a song over the water, striking with a low _thmmpk_ . Half a heartbeat later, the fish bobs to the surface, Avad’s arrow sticking out of its side. The man sucks in a sharp breath through his teeth, then exhales in a laugh, turning to Aloy. Belatedly she realizes how close their bodies are, her hands coming to rest on his upper arms just below the biceps. “I hit it! Sun and _shadow_ , Aloy, I – That was _incredible!_ ”

“It wasn’t bad,” she replies, laughing with him regardless. Avad is too excited to notice her sudden demurring, and goes to stand at the edge of the water. “So, how do you plan on bringing it to—"

A splash of frigid water catches her and she stands in stunned silence as the King of the Carja, Incarnation of the Sun and a thousand other prophetic names, kicks his way across the lake toward the place where his arrow juts up into the air like a flag. A few moments later, he’s hauling himself back onto the rock beside her.

“Your breakfast,” he says, presenting her with the still-dripping fish and a smile so dazzling, so brilliant, that the sun up above might as well have gone dark. 

With the help of a little Blaze and the last of the ridge-wood, it’s no time at all before the little fire Avad prepared roars into bright new life. While Avad, still dripping wet, cleans the fish, Aloy excuses herself to their campsite to pack things down and get him something to dry off on. 

When she comes to stand at the place where their things still rest, she hesitates. There’s something so familiar about all of this: dividing tasks around the camp to expedite packing out, a pair of bedrolls side-by-side next to a burnt-down fire, the morning’s practice and instruction with the bow. But these details are small, little crumbs of familiarity in a world that is otherwise completely unrecognizable to her.

In all the lessons Rost taught her, all the things he did to prepare her for life as a part of the tribe, he’d never told her about _this_. About doing something just for the joy of it, of the feeling of laughing until she can’t breathe and there are tears blurring her vision, of smiling until her cheeks hurt. About why it is that seeing someone smile so brilliantly at her makes some part of her want to tackle him right back into the water. 

Or maybe he had tried, but she’d been so focused on winning the Proving she’d never paid attention.

There’s more than that weighing on her thoughts. She’s come to realize that it’s not going to be long before the mountains block any view that they might have of the dawn, which she’s growing more and more concerned about. How will that affect Avad’s mood, and the new, comfortable balance of her daily routine? She’s been so focused on her goal for so long that she flounders with the realization that she’s not been enjoying the moment as she should, pushing them so intently that everything else has been left by the wayside. She wonders if she should slow their pace, or take a more circuitous route that will maintain their view of the dawn and the time and freedom she’s managed to secure for Avad.

Perhaps she doesn’t need to alter their course, but instead to simply slow their pace. As long as he doesn’t feel the need to rush, she doesn’t either. Instead, she decides, she’ll let them both enjoy their time together.

All of it is, in the end, excuse-making. But she goes with it regardless, gathering a blanket he’ll be able to use as a towel but leaving the rest of their camp intact. One more night here isn’t going to hurt a single thing.

The fish is almost done cooking when she gets back. Avad has stretched out on the warm stone like a satisfied cat, and seeing him like that, that frustration from before knots her gut up all over again. When he sees her, he’s quick to climb to his feet and walk to meet her. He looks a little confused at the light load that she’s carrying, but what is on his mind seems to take priority over it.

“Aloy, I’m…” he hesitates, looking to the side as he searches for words. Then he laughs, a little breathily, rubbing at the back of his head. His hair is still wet enough that it sticks up even when his hand falls away, and it’s all she can focus on. “I apologize for behaving so childishly. I have not felt such lightness since Kadaman-”

There’s a shadow that’s fallen across his face, and it’s a step more than Aloy can stand. She puts her hands on his chest, her heart beating in her throat at the feeling of his skin, warmed by the sun. Avad freezes, honey-brown eyes wide.

Then she pushes, and he’s clearly not expecting _that,_ because he fumbles to catch his balance by grasping for her arms. Like an eel she evades his fumbling grasp, instead sweeping with her leg and sending him toppling backward into the otherwise placid water. Half a heartbeat later she dives in after him, infinitely more graceful.

In unison they come splashing up for breath, Avad sucking in a gasp of shocked air as soon as he breaks the surface. There’s a moment where the shadow of sadness is gone from his expression. In its place is pure bewildered shock that edges on anger, but before she can worry about it his face has split into a piercing grin, his laughter filling the air. There’s nothing to do but to join in, her own laughter starting slow – then turning into a frantic shriek of the sort she’s not sure she’s ever made as he shoves a wave of icy water directly into her face. By the time they’re able to remember themselves, their stations, they’re both absolutely soaked and wheezing for breath. Aloy can’t shake that grin, the outward indicator of the light bubbling filling her throat.

Once they haul themselves, dripping, back onto the rock, their fish has cooked to a fine char. She grins as she pulls it from the heat far too late to really save the meal, picking a bit at the crisped skin. Avad joins her just a moment later, his hair plastered to his face in unruly tangles, and she can see he’s trying to keep the silly grin off his face. But he’s failing, so she doesn’t feel the need to shove him into the lake a second time. He collapses beside her to soak in the warmth of the fire and strengthening sunlight. He’s still breathing hard from the unexpected exertion, and Aloy very carefully keeps her eyes anywhere but the rise and fall of his chest. 

Oblivious to her distracted attention, he rummages in the cooking bag to pull out an apple, which he spears on the end of an arrow to delicately nibble at it. Once they’ve both eaten their fill and he’s put his vest on again, clearly expecting her to start their push onward for the day, Aloy rolls onto her back to look up at him.

“What was he like?” she asks quietly. Avad pauses, thumbing at the hem of his vest. He doesn’t need to ask her for clarification, because she can see the distant cast his expression takes on.

After a moment’s thought, he sits again, facing the sun instead of her. “He was… Quite violently himself.” That gets a smile of memory out of him. “He was always the most gregarious of us, and wildly popular. All the same, he always had time for me. For us, when Itamen was born, though I had worried that jealousy and fear would keep him from showing the new addition to our family the same warmth he had always given me.”

There’s a faraway look to him as he looks down at his apple, picking at the edges of his nails. It isn’t a sad one, not exactly. It’s just also not an emotion Aloy is familiar with, and she wonders if she should scoot closer to his side and try to provide some physical comfort now that her words have failed her. She doesn’t need to, though, because Avad raises his head with a wry smile and continues. “He had quite the temper on him, too, but I had never seen it aimed at myself, at least once we had both crossed from being children and I stopped being quite as much of a sullen chuff. He could be the most singularly arrogant person I had ever known.”

That is said with such affection that Aloy feels it in her gut as a pleasant warmth. “It sounds like you really loved him.”

“Everyone did,” Avad says quietly, but he nods in tacit agreement even if his words have minimized his own emotions. “I owe him… Well. Everything.”

“What do you mean?”

Avad doesn’t answer right away, instead taking another bite of his apple. That anxious picking at his nails has left the edge of his thumb red, but she sees no need to distract him or chide him for the habit. It’s exactly the kind of habit that Rost trained her out of, which is why she knows the perverse comfort that it can bring. “He had every quality most Carja wanted in a king. He had his temper, yes, but a generous soul and natural skill with almost anything he set his mind to. Especially hunting and fighting,” he smiles, a little sadly. “You would not have had to teach him how to shoot a fish.”

“That’s fine.” When he looks at her questioningly, she shrugs her shoulders. “I don’t think I would have wanted to.”

Gratitude washes over his expression and he takes a bite of the apple. Then, he passes it to her. She accepts it, but doesn’t take a bite just yet. “So. How is it that the royal heir ends up so bad at archery?”

Avad laughs out loud. “I thought you brought me out here to _answer_ questions?”

“You haven’t asked me any.” She points the apple at him a little threateningly, and he shows his palms. “You’re almost as evasive as Vanasha when you want to be.”

“I find that hard to believe,” he mutters, settling back and leaning onto his hands. “Like I said, Kadaman was the most skilled with martial practices. I hated trying to compete with him on the training grounds, and…”

The way he trails off makes her eyebrows lower, concerned all over again. He’s quiet for long enough that she starts scrambling to figure out how to direct his attention away from whatever is haunting his memories. Before she can, though, he’s speaking again, looking into the fire. “You grew up hunting machines, correct?”

“I did.” It was the only way to survive as an outcast, of course, but Aloy doesn’t feel it’s appropriate to bring up her own experiences just yet. There’s a weight to what he’s saying, and she gets the sense that it’s been a very long time since he’s spoken about this, if he’s _ever_ discussed it.

“Combat drills, for us, were not about hunting to eat or to thin out herds around Meridian. Those tasks we left to outlanders and members of the Lodge. We were taught to face against human targets with the understanding that we simply needed to drop them. ‘Simplifies things for the gallows-master if you kill them outright, use barbed arrows if you want to be sure’, he always said.” There’s a cast to his eyes that tells her everything she needs to know about who, exactly, had said that. “I was never very good at it.”

That last note is said so softly that it’s almost a whisper, understated in tone and meaning. There’s that urge to shift closer again, but Aloy holds it tight to herself, instead drawing her legs up to wrap her arms around her knees.

At any rate, Avad isn’t finished speaking, and Aloy finds that even if the conversation is rife with emotions she barely understands, she likes listening. Avad has a natural ability as an orator, which doesn’t come as any real surprise. It’s just another way traveling with him is something new, after years of Rost’s terse explanations and Sylens’s even more infuriating ability to always say nothing at all.

“Anyway, it didn’t end up mattering all that much. Kadaman was always so good at fighting, that for a long time I was allowed simply to pass beneath notice. When I was older, they fought about it, of course. Without my mother’s tempering presence, things around the palace had become quite a bit more militaristic.” There’s that smile again, but this time, she can’t see any undercurrent of sadness in his eyes. “Kadaman convinced my father that when the throne was left to him, he would need an advisor he could really trust, as Marad had been to him. Who better than his own brother? He was as hopeless with humanitarian subjects as I had been with the blade, and so I was left to my studies.”

Aloy inclines her head to the side and looks down at her bare feet, thoughtful. In her experience, hunting machines and animals was radically different to going toe-to-toe against another human. From a purely logistical perspective, hunting a man is an entirely different task than tangling against machines or animals. To incapacitate all but the most dangerous human, all it takes is a single solid hit – anywhere across their body. Whether the target is hidden beneath the brutal soot-paint of a bandit or the monstrous mask of the Eclipse makes no difference. To someone as inherently sensitive as Avad, human life will always be held in the highest esteem.

As is so often the case, inspiration strikes sudden out of a clear sky.

“What about against a machine?”

Avad’s eyes widen – with fear or excitement, she’s not sure, but it doesn’t make any difference from her perspective because all she can do is grin.

Quickly, he regains his composure. “I can’t say I have much practice on that front,” he says, a very slight tremor in his voice. Something must show in her expression, because he swallows hard, blinks a few times. “Aloy, what are you –“

She cuts him off. “Get dressed, and bring your bow. You can use some of my arrows.”

“What about the rest of our things?” To his credit, he doesn’t hesitate further, instead dusting himself off now that most of the water has dried. “If we want to reach Daytower tonight, shouldn’t we leave?”

“Daytower’s not going anywhere anytime soon, and neither will our camp,” Aloy straps the armored components of her blazon on, tosses back hair that’s tightly-curled following her unexpected dip. She gives Avad a grin that’s dripping in mischief. “Not quite the case with _them_ , though.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lots of emotions about kadaman. i see him as a bit of a kamina-like figure - it took his death to really let avad find himself, as a leader as well as a _person _.__  
>  Side note of timing: i based travel times on gmaps estimates, rather than game travel times.
> 
>  
> 
> _more art from me: this of the three Radiants._  
>  https://radiant-avad.tumblr.com/post/186251290558/what-is-it-like-to-live-in-the-shadow-of-a-man  
> As well as the art that started this all, from snuffysbox on tumblr again!!!!  
> https://radiant-avad.tumblr.com/post/185136759793/snuffysbox-last-of-the-latest-round-of


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw for frank portrayal of trauma/ptsd flashbacks

It doesn’t take long at all for Avad to figure out who the _them_ in question is. Aloy leads him along the trail for maybe half an hour before the rocky landscape opens to a wide scrub. Dust and sand whip by on the wind, scouring his exposed skin. He pulls the scarf draped around his neck – long something he’d regarded as part of the current fashion but that he now sees as a necessity – up over his mouth and nose to block out the worst of the dust.

Avad isn’t accustomed to life out in the deserts of the Sundom. At first he attributes the subtle rumbling beneath his feet to his over-tired, overactive mind, or perhaps even to the staggering of his own pulse hammering through his entire body. When he looks to Aloy for some guidance, she doesn’t show any sign of disturbance. 

That uncertainty he simply internalizes, chalking up the strange experience to his own disorientation rather than anything out in the wilds. All the same, he tucks it into the back of his mind for later. When they set up camp this evening, he’ll mention it to her. They’re close enough to Daytower now that if he needs to take a few days to regain his bearings, it shouldn’t be the end of the world. After all, something in Aloy seems to have changed. If their pace before was a death march, this is a sightseeing adventure through the lower markets of Meridian.

He’s scrambling up over a hillside composed of loose scree when he hears it.

At first, he isn’t able to place the sound. It reminds him a little of an Oseram instrument he’d heard during his time at Mainspring, a kind of metal basin that is rubbed with resin-coated hairs to produced a low vibrating hum. But even that isn’t sufficient, because that sound – while clearly metallic in origin – had a distinctly human quality to it. After a moment’s thought and another blast from below, he considers it as more like the roaring echo of the machine-wrought pipes he’d once heard played by traveling Banuk. Those were designed to amplify only the bearer’s lung power into a tremendous roar, casting the mighty sound in an echo across the mesa’s steep edges.

But that isn’t it, either. Those sounds, both Banuk and Oseram, carry with them the touch of humanity. This has none of that. That isn’t to say that there isn’t a tonal quality to it, just that it doesn’t seem like anything born of a human. It’s new to him, utterly unique.

It makes his pulse quicken, excitement overwhelming any sensible nervousness he should be experiencing.

At the top of the hillside, camouflaged by red-tipped grasses that render her hair almost completely invisible, Aloy is crouching. She raises her hand to wave him to her side without a word, and he slinks forward.

Maybe she’s surprised by his quiet, but he has had a lot of practice in not being noticed. The only sign of it is a brief widening of her eyes, before she quickly signs ahead with two fingers.

There, at the base of the scree, five enormous machines make their leisurely way across the rocky terrain. Their heads are lowered, but he can still see the bright blue lights of their lenses hidden beneath their imposing horns, which they use to scrape at the dry earth. He watches, because in a state of terror it’s easy to focus on the little details, on the way their toes splay with each step to better support their tremendous bulk. Across their bodies there are dozens of points of light, all dim compared to the mighty drum carried low on their belly, a processing core larger even than the heart of a Thunderjaw.

Avad knows of the different types of machines, of course. Of those that came with the Derangement, he doesn’t know quite as much – but no one does, apart from the most daring of the Lodge. These, the Tramplers, have been a part of his world since before he could walk. It shouldn’t send him into such a stunned quiet, and yet, he’s never been within a stone’s throw of even a single beast.

Here, close enough that he can practically smell the greased joints and the acrid tone of superheated metal, are _five_ just itching for him to study.

And they make that sound. Low, loud enough to make the ground beneath his fingertips tremble, their calls fill the air. _No,_ he corrects himself quickly. _Their_ songs _fill the air_. Because that’s what it is, and it isn’t just knowledge of Banuk tradition that puts the thought into his mind.

Aloy doesn’t seem to be nearly as enraptured by the creatures as he is, because she’s scanning the area. That ghostly blue glow – very similar, he notes now, to the light given by the Tramplers’ lenses – has lit up at her ear, and she’s thoughtfully considering the terrain.

Her posture changes in an instant, surveyor to stalker. He follows her gaze, and that’s when he sees it. Weaving its way through the enormous Tramplers is a single Watcher, prowling. Up close, he knows the machine is nearly as tall as a man when standing upright, but it is so dwarfed in the presence of the herd this he’s struck by a sense of amusement.

Before he can say a word, Aloy inclines her head back down the embankment: _Follow_.

Then she’s gone, prowling out of sight so quietly that he’s reminded once more of the time he’s spent thinking of her as a ghost. Less gracefully, but still quiet, he drops after her. She hasn’t given him much detail about her plan, but he’s no fool. She’s taken him here to hunt: not humans, not animals, but machines.

The combined excitement and terror makes his head spin, but somehow, he’s able to focus entirely outside of his mind. He becomes her shadow, so when she draws her bow he does as well. A hundred paces from the Watcher, a thousand paces from the Trampler herd, they wait.

“One of the first things Rost ever taught me,” Aloy says softly, her voice barely audible over the constant murmurings of machine-talk and the susurrus of the wind, “is that a wise hunter waits for the perfect shot. As long as your foe doesn’t know where you are, they will always make a misstep that you can capitalize on.”

There’s a funny sort of tone that her voice has taken on. It reminds him of one of the tutors he’s worked with, but there’s also something else. Something rueful. This Rost – it’s not a name he’s familiar with, but this isn’t the time to ask. In place of the rumbling, which he knows now to be the herd as it moves across the landscape, he files that away for later questioning.

She doesn’t nock an arrow, instead nodding to him. He tries not to fumble, caught more than a little off-guard. “You’ll want to hit the eye – the lens.” A quick correction, the difference in the patois of a hunter versus a scholar. “A solid shot will drop it immediately, and it won’t have a chance to alert the herd. It’s the only one out today. You have only one second chance if you miss. If you fail that, then we run. You’re fast, right?”

There isn’t time to answer, though. Avad feels sweat beading on his forehead as he nocks his arrow, thoughts turning to the steady Sun for guidance. He doesn’t draw, not yet. There’s no sense in exhausting his arm and throwing his aim off-target before he even has a clear shot. How long they sit like that, he can’t be sure, but Aloy’s words are his mantra: A wise hunter waits. A wise hunter is patient.

There’s a moment when it looks like the Watcher’s head will swing toward them and he pulls the bowstring taut. At the last minute, though, it turns away again, curiously regarding the path of a rat that’s been startled from the underbrush.

In that moment, several things happen in rapid succession, so fast that later Avad isn’t exactly sure that they happened at different times at all. Beside him, Aloy’s hands are at her mouth and she emits a shrill – but remarkably targeted – whistle. The Watcher’s head, on its sinuous neck, swivels toward them. Its blue light flashes a warning yellow, and one of its slender legs turns so that its body rotates toward where they’re hiding. Avad reacts with pure instinct, loosing the arrow.

As surely as a dropped stone finds the earth, the Watcher collapses. Sparks fizzle around the place his arrow juts from its eye, but it is absolutely still. Oblivious, the Tramplers continue their laborious scraping of the earth, their musical songs a contrast to the sharp and immediate violence that’s slain their guardian.

It’s not quite a laugh that escapes Avad, since he’s still all too aware of the need to keep quiet, but a triumphant exhalation. Yes, it might only be a Watcher. But it was _his_ kill. Aloy turns to him, grinning broadly, her face aglow with delight. “Well, there might be hope for you yet.”

Her earlier words come back to him, the terror he’d felt when she’d suddenly drawn the attention of their prey. “I thought you said that a wise hunter waited for the right opportunity?”

Aloy shoulders her bow, which is a bit of a puzzle to him since the Tramplers are still between them and the trail. “A wise hunter, sure. A _great_ hunter, though, knows how to make those opportunities.”

With that concept swimming in his mind, Aloy suddenly drops along the remaining five feet of scree, to the hard-packed earth that the Trampler herd is busily churning up. Her bow is still on her back, and Avad barely remembers himself in time to choke down a cry of alarm. All the same, he crouches low in the gently-waving grasses, his eyes wide as he watches her.

In the name of the _Sun,_ what is she doing?

In increments that can barely be measured in half-inches, she creeps toward one of the enormous creatures. With her slight frame as a reference, he can scarcely believe how huge the machine is. She’s approaching from the side, where its lens is obscured by the enormous horns that it’s using to scrape at the hard-packed earth, tilling it in the same manner he’s seen farmers in the Maizelands prepare soil for planting. (There’s a question there, too, one more in a collection that he could certainly compile into a mighty tome - all of it waiting for the right opportunity to sit down with Aloy for more information)

This just isn’t the time to ask, not with Aloy slipping like a shadow to the machine’s side.

She is creeping so quietly through the brush that he can only tell she’s there by the wake she makes in the long grass. He can barely see that she’s unshouldered her spear, holding it like an extension of her body, making his heart catch in his throat. With their machine-metal tips, arrows are more than capable of tearing through protective plating while keeping the hunter at a safe distance. A spear, though? That is an entirely different story, relying on the brute strength of its user and tremendous skill to keep its shaft from catching between armor plated joints.

In an instant, his mind is cleft. Part of him, the rational part, is thrilled to finally get a chance to see the legendary machine hunter in action against such an enormous foe. He’s never seen her fight like this, after all, and he _knows,_ as sure as Sunrise, how capable she is. 

But the rest of him, a far louder and more demanding part, plunges his thoughts into irrational and wordless terror. That terror is an old friend, but one he hasn’t felt for many years. Even the Eclipse and their assault on Meridian didn’t squeeze a vice around his lungs quite like this. He can’t scream. He also can’t watch, helpless, while another person he loves meets their end beneath the unyielding metal of a machine. He nocks an arrow, prepares a shot, and freezes. 

It’s that spear that sends him back there, and the shape of the Trampler: its processing core very much like a heavy metal canister, the bristle of antennae rising from its haunches. Plus, seen from this close, it’s _enormous._ That vague shape that he knows is Aloy barely comes up to the center of the machine’s immense core and its flank is at least three times her height. Armed only with a spear the most she’ll be able to do is enrage the horrible creature, and she’ll be reduced beneath its feet like –

It isn’t the bow that’s in his hands. It’s the railing of the Sun-Ring, heated to such a degree by the noonday Sun that it burns his palms. He can’t let go. His skin is screaming. He can’t look away. Down below, separated by a distance that can be measured only as the space between universes, Avad can see the cold defiance in Kadaman’s eyes. He refuses to show fear even now. Across the Sun-Ring from him, tied down with a dozen wires each the width of a man’s arm, the Behemoth paws the dusty ground and throws its enormous head from side to side, bellowing so loudly that the earth shakes.

The scene is frozen like that for a moment, two forces staring each other down. It’s absolutely silent beyond the noises of the machine, or perhaps the air is so filled with noise that he can’t manage to pick out any distinct sounds. Just a low din in his ears, the drum of his pulse.

From far away, something reaches him. It’s the straining of metal, the Behemoth tossing its enormous head with another horrific roar. Then – _thhhpkKKH –_ a wire snaps.

Another. A third and a fourth. The Behemoth lurches forward and Kadaman, Rising Dawn, Radiant, his _brother –_

Kadaman isn’t looking at the machine that is now rearing onto its hind legs, thousands of pounds of unyielding metal rising up to block the Sun with the massive hammer of its head. Kadaman is looking at him, at Avad, and there’s a perfect moment of stillness. Two words: he only has time to mouth two words, but that’s all he needs before the world 

goes 

_red._

“These guys are always fun.” 

A voice, bemused and familiar and new all at once, cuts through the dizzying vortex of his memories. He clings to that voice, blinks, focuses on his bow. He feels his skin is clammy, the sinking rush of blood from his head going right into a nauseated pit. Somehow, he’s still crouched there, bow in hand. He blinks again – raises his head. Something touches him, cool metal against hot flesh, and it takes him a second to register what he’s seeing. Not because of that horrible place entirely of his own imagining, but because he just can’t comprehend the information his eyes have provided him.

The thing that’s touched him, that’s still nosing at his shoulder, body humming against his skin with the unknowable forces that power its mighty form, is the Trampler. Its wires are alight with the soft blue glow of a Banuk shaman, and it blows air from the constantly-moving tines of its horns with a soft _whmmh_. Beside it, one hand on the joint of its foreleg, Aloy is smiling at him like nothing at all is wrong.

Because it isn’t, not here.

It’s the strangeness of the situation that gives him a firm anchor at last. “Yeah, the first time I saw one up close I was terrified. You get used to it.” She pats the side of the Trampler like she’s reassuring it. As sure as a beast made of flesh, it swings its head toward her and he can see the glimmer of the Sun in its lens. “I thought this guy could help us harvest some parts to trade at Daytower.”

Without thinking, Avad reaches out. He freezes, though, looks toward Aloy for confirmation. When she gives it, he places his hand on the smooth metal of its snout-plate. The fear is still pulsing in him, but he focuses on the growing sense of wonder that’s buzzing ever more insistent in his mind. How many other people have touched a living machine like this? Perhaps some of the Banuk, but a Carja? 

“Incredible,” he says, quietly, as though he’s afraid that he’ll startle the beast. For its part, the Trampler seems to care less about their presence than a river does a stone. 

When he looks back to Aloy, there’s a familiar expression on her face. The first time he’d seen it, they’d been standing on a balcony at the Palace together, the moment this whole plan had taken root in her mind. At first, he’d cast a shadow on it. Now, though, he fully intends to give it light enough to let it grow and flourish. After all, he’s come to understand that this experience, wonderful as it may be, isn’t just for _him_.

“Just wait until you see what it can do,” Aloy says, mischief sparking in her grin. 

No further explanation is given, and Avad is content to watch. She raises her hands to the air between herself and the machine, and makes a series of gestures. Avad tries to follow them, as though simply by observing the patterns she’s tracing, he might be able to exert the same command over machines. Without any change he can see from her movements, the Trampler responds to the dominance of her will. It swings its head to look back down the hill, where its brethren graze oblivious to their machinations above.

Then it plunges forward, an arrow more devastating than any ever shot from a bow.

The rest of the Tramplers look up – they clearly aren’t expecting aggression from one of their fellows, as their lenses barely have a chance to flash yellow before there’s an earth-shattering impact of metal on metal. The blue-laced Trampler carves a path through the others, circling back around with its core gaining heat and taking on a glow so ferocious it almost burns his eyes to watch. That energy is released in a firestorm that starts the grass around them smoking, but reduces them to ash so quickly that a blaze never has a chance to catch.

Next to him, Aloy is rummaging in her quiver. She pulls out an arrow that’s unlike any that he’s carrying, a dual-pronged tip at the end of a long, thick shaft. There’s a little latch at that tip, and Aloy flips it. Immediately a humming noise – not entirely dissimilar from the ringing in his ears, he notes with a disquieted feeling in the pit of his stomach – fills the air, a little shimmer around the tip indicating its rapid vibration. Aloy passes Avad the arrow first, then her bow.

He opens his mouth, but she takes his hands into her own again, nocking the arrow for him with a crooked grin. “Aim for the core.”

“Won’t that damage the one you–?”

“That’s the one I want you to aim for.” She lets go of his hands, leaving him holding the bow.

Holding that arrow is like holding something alive, a buzzing insect crashing against a windowpane in its quest for freedom. He stands, shifts his weight as she’d showed him. Before he draws, he looks down at her, licking his lower lip. “What if I miss?”

Aloy rolls her eyes at him, but the expression isn’t unkind. “You won’t, Avad,” she says quietly, which only makes him feel more frantic.

But he sets his sight all the same, mentally begs the Sun to at least kill him quickly should he miss, pulls back on the string – and fires. The arrow arcs through the air faster than he can track, hitting the glowing core of the Trampler. The second it punctures the thick hide its whining buzz crescendos into a percussive blast, and the core detonates.

Even from the top of the hill, Avad can feel the heat of the explosion. The great machine is turned into a roaring inferno so intense it’s like a little Sun all of itself, still throwing its bulk at its former allies in a confused brawl. A fraction of a minute later and the world below is returned to peace as quickly as madness had erupted. A few small fires burn themselves out, the superheated metal of the fallen machines still glowing faintly.

A breath Avad didn’t realize he was holding escapes from him, and he looks down at Aloy, feeling dazed. She’s smiling at him, but it isn’t the same mischievous look he’s seen her wear before. Instead, she looks proud. “See?” she whispers. “I knew you wouldn’t miss.”

* * *

 

It takes almost the rest of the day for the carcasses of the Tramplers to cool enough for Aloy to harvest any useful parts from them, so she scouts ahead to find more machines for Avad to practice his technique. He struggles with hitting smaller targets, especially the longer he has to think about it – but while she doubts he’ll ever be able to participate in the Hunter’s Lodge, he’s also not half so terrible as he thinks he is. Keeping those doubts out of his mind seems to be what he has the most difficult time with, but as the day goes on, he shows admirable tenacity.

By the time she finally realizes he’s going to want to keep practicing until his fingers fall off, the sun is low in the sky and by Aloy’s estimate, there isn’t enough time for them to reach the place where he’d watched the previous night’s sunset, so she directs them to the west instead, where low rock formations look out over the great bowl of the Sundom. The top of the rock she selects is a little over her head, so she nods toward Avad.

“Give me a boost,” she says, only belatedly realizing how much it sounds like a command.

Before she can try to walk it back, though, Avad has put his back against the sandstone, crouched and ready for her. He meets her eyes and nods her forward. “On three,” he says, very simply.

Luckily, she manages to make it over the top of the outcropping before her face breaks into a grin so wide it’s almost uncomfortable. Normally she’d be the one giving a boost and letting Avad, as the heavier of the two, pull her up after – but in this case, she thinks better of it. Instead, using a complicated knot, she loops some rope around a scraggly tree that has somehow found enough nutrition to grow among so much exposed rock, then walks back to the edge. This has the added benefit of giving her a chance to regain her composure, but it almost breaks all over again when she looks over the edge and directly into Avad’s befuddled expression.

All-Mother give her strength.

“What did you find up there?” he asks, oblivious to her mirth. There isn’t long before sunset now, and he keeps glancing to the reddening sky in the west. It promises to be a glorious one, even by the very high standards of the eastern desert.

“Come up and see for yourself.” Avad picks up the end of the rope she drops him and Aloy gathers up some of the slack, planting her feet firmly, hips squared against his weight. To his credit, it’s mostly his own effort that gets him up the side. As soon as his face comes into view, though, Aloy helps pull him the rest of the way up, clasping one of his hands in her own until he finds his footing. Without releasing his hand she leads him back past the gnarled tree, until they’ve reached the opposite side of the outcropping, facing due west.

The sky is on fire.

Without looking away from the horizon, Avad squeezes her hand. Tentative. Like he’s holding a baby bird or an egg, something he is afraid to damage. “It really is beautiful out here.”

Aloy isn’t watching the fading light. Her gaze is, instead, on Avad: on the light where it strikes his irises and gives them a glow that seems to come from within, on the shape of wonder on his lips, on the unruly tangle of his hair where it sticks up around his headdress and the stubble that’s grown unevenly across his jaw after days without a proper shave. But that isn’t what she’s thinking about. She’s thinking instead that what she’s seeing isn’t beautiful, that there’s a word far more fitting: _Radiant_. 

In her hand, his hold is secure without being stifling. Until the red fades from the sky they stand like that, side-by-side in the dimming glow. 

She closes her eyes for a minute and focuses on his touch. There’s so much filling her mind that she thinks that she might understand why he has such a hard time shooting. There’s something taking shape in her, but it isn’t something she’s ready to set free. Not yet. 

“I thought you might like it,” she agrees, releasing his hand with a tremendous strength of will. That’s when she notices that her fingers have cooled quickly after contact with his skin, almost like they’re wet –

“Avad!” she gasps, lunging for his hand again, turning the palm toward her. Even in the darkening sky, there’s more than enough light left to see the way his expression tightens at her touch, that some of what she’d taken for nervousness in his grip was actually pain. His palm is crossed with blisters, some of which have cracked during his climb to the top of the rock and are now oozing blood. “Why didn’t you say something?”

Quickly, she ushers him to sit while she rummages in her medicine pouch. There’s a topical salve that she uses on her own calluses, particularly when the cold chaps her skin, and very gently she applies it to the worst of the blisters. “I did not want to slow you down,” he says sheepishly. “Don’t – don't even _think_ to apologize, Aloy, not for something I did to myself. Besides...”

When he doesn’t continue, she looks up from her ministrations to find his lips pulled away from his teeth in a good-natured (if goofy) grin. “...I had fun today.”

That makes her smile too, a little sheepishly. “I did too,” she admits. Then, she unwinds some cloth she’s kept for just this purpose and wraps it around his hand. “But don’t do that again. Any injury can lead to you getting an infection, and we don’t have time to spend waiting for you to recover. I’d hate to have to leave you behind on your own pilgrimage.”

“Perish the thought,” he mumbles distractedly, inspecting her handiwork by clasping and unclasping his hand a few times. The wrapping holds.

“Will you be able to make it back down?”

“Aloy.” His tone is abruptly serious. “I could _jump_ down. I think I will be alright.”

Embarrassment makes her irritated, and she taps his sternum sharply. “ _Don’t you dare._ What did I just say about getting hurt? Either use the rope or I’ll tie you up in it and _lower_ you down.”

Avad laughs and her irritation is gone in an instant, especially at the way he holds his palms open toward her, submissive deference all over. “I take your point, there is no need to threaten me.”

“Good,” she mumbles, turning from him to lead him back. He was absolutely right, of course, it was a distance they could easily jump. All the same, she unhooks a clip fashioned from the leg joint of a Watcher, showing him how to tie the rope around his belt so that when she’s belaying him, he’ll catch partway instead of going into a freefall if he makes a misstep. It’s best, she supposes, to start going over this kind of thing when a fall isn’t likely to seriously injure him. What she doesn’t feel the need to tell him is how long it’s been since she’s done this kind of partner climb, and that she’s as happy for the practice as he must be. 

Once they’re down and she’s retrieved her rope, they make their way back to the place she’s tucked the harvest from the Tramplers. With the larger components left out in the field, the valuable scrap she’s carved from them has been safe from the attention of Scrappers or Glinthawks. Finally, they’re on their way back to the camp.

Aloy is exhausted, but pleased on a level she’s surprised by. It’s been a long day – and while they could have made it to Daytower if they’d pressed ahead as originally planned, she thinks that her time was much better spent this way. Missing a day like this – another day with Avad – in favor of covering that extra ground?

It just isn’t worth it.


	8. Chapter 8

By the time they make it back to their little camp by the lakeside, the moon has risen high and casts their path in a thin, pale light. They get situated in their beds, Avad leaning back into his piled furs with a relieved sigh. Aloy turns onto her side to face him. “Think you’ll actually be able to sleep tonight?”

“I certainly hope so.” He stretches his arms out over his head. Then, with almost comical timing, he yawns so loudly she thinks it must be exaggerated. 

As if on cue, she catches the yawn, breaking into a giggle as soon as it passes. There’s the shadow of a smile on what she can make of Avad’s face. He’s quiet, though, and even in the dark she can tell that his eyes are cast away from her, likely fixed instead on the bones of the previous evening’s fire.

“I like that,” he finally admits with a voice that’s soft and unsure.

“Like what?” Aloy has a pretty good idea what his answer will be. But a part of her – most of her, a fact that is troubling – wants to hear him say it.

There’s little doubt that he knows that _she_ knows what he’s talking about, and the question has put him on the spot. To his credit, though, he doesn’t try to squirm his way out of answering. “Making you laugh.”

There it is, the answer she’s been hoping, and afraid to hope, for. She pulls her blankets up close to herself. There’s a sharp chill in the air that reminds her that they’re quickly leaving the mild Sundom behind. It isn’t the cold she needs protection from, though. “Well, you’re getting pretty good at it.”

“I like that, too.”

“…me, too.” Four heartbeats pass, then five. She wonders what he’s thinking, wishes that her Focus in all its capacity could show her the secrets of a man as easily as it shows the secrets of the past. But she’s left without any answers that she'll be able to get without opening herself to further vulnerability. Frustrated and excited in equal measure, heart in her throat, she presses her face into her pillow with a measured breath.

“Aloy?”

When Avad breathes her name, she hears him. But she doesn’t reply, because the conversation they've already had tonight has used up her bravery. Instead, she’s feeling _small,_ sinking into the kind of queasy nervousness she's never known how to combat _._ So she pretends to be asleep, just like she has for the last three nights, and Avad doesn’t say anything else. 

This isn’t tenable; not for much longer, at any rate. Aloy knows she needs to do something. She just doesn’t know _what._ Her thoughts spiral, each idea slipping just out of grasp and leaving her no more prepared to address him than she’s ever been.

That isn’t the only challenge to her sleep.

There was a moment, after she’d overridden the Trampler and turned to walk it back up the hill to him, that he’d been frozen. Not just still – she’d seen statues with more life than him, though statues didn’t stare ashy-skinned and panic-stricken beneath a film of sweat. Fear of any machine larger than a Grazer is prudent, but what she saw in Avad was not just fear. The image of his empty eyes stays with her now, even when she’s closed her own. That blank look, staring straight ahead – an expression she’s felt but never seen before. 

That fear, the crawling, clawing kind of memory that hollows the guts and leaves a staring shell, she knows it. For her, it is deep in the memory of eyes that are like a pit made of the ice that burns, that scalds, that tears – and, in doing so, leaves a mark on her throat and in her heart. What cure is there, for a fear like that? She hadn’t known then, and that hasn’t changed.

Someday, maybe, she’ll find one. Then she can help Avad.

The next dawn comes quickly. She’d still been deep in thought when she’d finally given into her exhaustion, no closer to an answer than she’d ever been. There’s a merry tune playing in her ear, and Aloy jerks awake. The alarm she’d programmed into her Focus continues its cheery old-world jangling and she blearily pushes her hair out of her face, pawing at her eyes as though that’ll be enough to chase away her sleepiness. 

“Alright, alright,” she mutters, tracing a pattern in the lights of her Focus array and banishing the noise. “Enough. I’m awake.”

When she climbs out of her blankets she finds Avad still in the process of brewing their tea. He’s clearly surprised to see her awake so early. Normally Aloy sleeps until after the breaking of dawn, so she’s up much earlier than usual. Their little ritual is broken, but Avad seems quietly pleased to have her company. They watch the rising sun together, drinking tea sitting side by side in companionable quiet. 

She plans the day’s route – if they don’t encounter any distractions, it won’t be hard for them to finally reach Daytower. From there, she can map out their next stop. That chill she’d tasted the previous night almost certainly speaks to harsh conditions deeper in the mountains. That means taking the valley road, but she needs to find out the current state of the high eastern pass before she can put any ideas into a concrete form. 

Luckily, Avad doesn’t ask her about what she is planning – a small blessing by _some_ higher power, considering she’s still figuring out a lot of the details as they go. That isn’t to say he’s quiet as they make their way down the trail. Instead, he asks questions about the plants she gathers along the path, observes the changes in their surroundings, tells her the names of a dozen kinds of bird, which he recognizes by song alone.

Of course, she already knows the names of most of them. Where things get interesting is when the names she’s been taught, the Nora names, differ from the Carja ones. They spend the trip talking about these little differences, and inane as it may be, she enjoys every minute of it.

All-Mother’s mercy, she’s almost disappointed when she catches sight of a great watchtower ahead of them. The sun has passed its zenith when they turn onto the Way of Broken Stones, the winding trail that will bring them directly to Daytower. When she looks back at Avad, he’s staring into the sky, filled with nervous wonder. Aloy’s mouth presses into a frown, then she realizes what he’s looking at.

“Pretty incredible, isn’t it?” she asks, turning her attention to the north where a great Stormbird coasts in lazy orbit overhead. “If you thought the Trampler was big, hope you never see one of _them_ up close.”

Still looking a little dazed, Avad looks down at her. He smiles, though, something in him relaxing. “What, isn’t that why you brought me out here?” His tone is light and easy now.

“I mean, I _could_ …”

“Aloy, _no_ , absolutely not.” He grabs at her arm, stilling it before she even manages to unshoulder her bow.

“I was _kidding_ , Avad.” The grin that’s bloomed on her face doesn’t feel like it’s likely to leave. “There’s too much risk for collateral damage this close to the path, anyway. I don’t want a patrol put at risk.” She inclines her head back toward the Stormbird. “I feel safer hunting something like that alone.”

Avad’s lips are a thin line. “I’m never sure if I should worry for you, or write you off as a madwoman.”

“Why not both?”

“I settled on that a long time ago,” he laughs, letting her go as soon as he feels sure that she isn’t going to turn around and try to shoot the mighty machine out of the sky. She makes note, mentally, that she’ll have to capture a Stormbird for him to meet face-to-face at some point to try and help him tame his fear. It’ll do him a lot of good to be able to travel the length of the Sundom with only a healthy fear of the larger machines, rather than one that, to her eyes, is borderline pathological.

Granted, she has to admit to herself that her idea of a reasonable fear of machines might be somewhat skewed.

They’ve reached the halfway point up the switchbacks of the road when Avad hesitates. In the space of only a few hours they’ve climbed several hundred feet, and the air has already taken on a punishing bite. By nightfall, it might actually be dangerous in their current gear. Any delay now makes Aloy anxious, so she turns to face him. “What?”

“I don’t know your plans,” Avad says quietly. “Nor do I want to learn them. But would it be too much of an interruption if we were to stay for a few days? I would like to tend to some matters of state before we go incognito again. I have a feeling that this may be the last real opportunity I will have for it, at least for a time.”

Almost more than the meaning of his words, the way he’s saying them sets her teeth on edge. It makes her think of the first time she’d ever met him, more figurehead than man, a particularly stark reminder in it of something that she’s been able to put in the back of her mind. Despite how different an Avad outside of Meridian might be, he’s _still_ Avad, still Sun-King, still carrying the weight of his tribe. Of course there are political issues he’ll need to tend to. There will _always_ be political matters for Avad, no matter how far out of the Sundom he goes or how deeply he loses himself, as she’s been able to do for months.

It’s just that her perspective has had a chance to shift. It hasn’t been long that they’ve been traveling together, certainly not so long as to expect anything too dramatic to have changed between them. But it _has,_ because the Avad that she’s found in the wilds, the Avad that’s removed from his crown, is one that she actually _likes._ It isn’t that she’d disliked him before, not really, but it had been so hard to emotionally distance him from his position of authority and her own bias.

That is a reminder that Aloy has needed, she realizes, her gut twisting around its weight like a stone.

“Right,” she says a little distantly, absently pushing a curl of hair back behind her ear, her gaze cast just below the level of his eyes. “Of course. It’ll probably take a few days to get our gear upgraded anyway.”

The relief in Avad’s smile is a second rock dropped atop the first. “Thank you. I promise not to cause any more delay than necessary.”

Aloy nods, a smile she doesn’t feel her only response, and turns back to the trail.

They reach Daytower at sunset. A large group of the Carja living there has clustered at the western ridge, all of them there to bid the sun a safe journey into the Forbidden West. It’s all entirely – how did Sylens put it? Useless mysticism. Ignorance at its finest. The Forbidden West is just a dramatic name for Carson City, where Aloy suffered no harm beyond a sore ass from riding all day. 

And the sun isn’t going anywhere. It’s the earth that’s turning away.

Almost as soon as the thought crosses her mind, guilt for her harsh judgment takes the place of her irritation, because she’s promised herself that no matter how much she learns she isn’t going to turn into Sylens. Mysticism of all kinds has always and will always have an important role to humanity, even if it’s something she personally finds no comfort in. She’s struggling to keep from feeling too jaded, though, because the last few hours have darkened her mood faster than they have the sky. Avad is, predictably, lingering near the groups. She forces herself to let out a breath through her teeth, low and quiet, until all the air is gone from her. Six seconds to empty her lungs.

Then, when she inhales again with a count of eight, she thinks instead about the goal of this expedition. That hasn’t changed, and it gives her enough of an anchor to keep her expression neutral when she nods toward Avad. “Stay for the ceremony, it’s alright. I’m going to go to the market and see what I can find.”

When she passes into the marketplace, it creates a physical distance that echoes the emotional one that’s yawning between them. Aloy hunches her shoulders up against the cold, scanning the vendors to find someone who is selling the kind of gear she’s in the market for. Near the end of the row, next to the fort itself, there’s a mannequin fitted in a suit of what she assumes must pass as cold-weather gear for the Carja.

Something about it catches her eye and she reaches toward it, fingering the hem thoughtfully. The stitching is sure and secure. Whatever it is that’s nagging at her is something she can think about more after she’s finished. For now, she’s satisfied that this is exactly what she’s got in mind. “Hello? Anyone here?”

“Be right there!”

The voice that calls out from just beyond the doorway, where the shop itself must be located, is so familiar – though out of place – that Aloy almost jumps out of her boots. She swings her face toward the door and is met with what must be a mirror of her own expression on Teb’s face, where he’s appeared with a bundle of fine leather clutched in his hands.

“Aloy?” he asks, dumbstruck.

“ _Teb?!”_ she gasps.

But there isn’t time to stand and boggle over it before the instinct to fling herself at the thin man overwhelms her. She grabs Teb in a secure hold, laughing despite herself.

If she’d been asked a day or two ago what she was dreading most about being in Daytower, Avad taking care of his business wouldn’t even have ranked compared to running into one of the Nora. But standing here, hugging Teb in the middle of the market, she’s realized the truth is the exact opposite. Finally, the shock and joy of it fade, and reality takes their place. “What are you _doing_ here, Teb?”

Her friend – first friend, by _his_ reckoning – sets down the leathers she’s crushed during her sudden embrace. He’s grinning from ear to ear. “Shouldn’t _I_ be asking that?” Then he stops and looks at her, really looks at her, and puts his hands on her bare arms. “No, that can wait. Come inside, I’ve got a cloak you can throw on. You look like you’re freezing.”

In the rush of shocked excitement over seeing Teb, she’s momentarily forgotten how cold she is. But his touch sets goosebumps off all over her arms, and she nods gratefully. Avad is the furthest thing from her worries at that moment – if he can’t find her in a market consisting of all of four stalls and a fruit vendor, there is absolutely no redeeming him. 

Through the doorway is a short stairway down into a large basement room, lit by merry yellow lights set into the walls. All around there are mannequins and bundles of cloth, leather, and furs – a bizarre mélange of Carjan finery and Nora utility. A few finished pieces are hanging on one wall, a showcase of his goods to potential clients. True to his word, Teb presents Aloy with a fur-lined hunter’s cape, and she shrugs it over her shoulders with a grateful sigh. In the warmed walls of the fort she doesn’t need it anymore, but after being in the biting cold it’s a welcome comfort. They settle into a pair of chairs near his workspace and Teb leans forward to take her hands. 

“I’m so glad to see you, Aloy, you can’t imagine,” he says quietly, voice earnest. “I’d sent word with the envoys that have been to Mother’s Heart, but they said no one had seen you for… months.”

Aloy looks down at his hands, his birdlike fingers. Then, abruptly overwhelmed, she lowers her head. “I know. No, I… I _don’t_ know. I needed some time on my own, to…” What can she say? She’d worried about the way she’d be greeted at Meridian, but what of the Nora? She thinks of Varl, of Sona, of Teersa. Seeing Teb has opened an emotional vulnerability in her that makes her feel like an absolute fool. “…to think.”

When she raises her eyes again, there’s nothing but compassion in Teb’s expression. “Well, there’s always room for you to think here.”

Gratitude floods her, and Aloy manages a weak smile. The day’s emotions have pulled her from one extreme to another, and she’s feeling exhausted by it all. “So… you’re working with the Carja, now?”

“Part of a cultural exchange, you might say,” Teb says with a little laugh, and Aloy thinks she sees some color in his cheeks. “The Carja needed a Stitcher who actually knew how to handle the cold, and… well, after…”

The way that he trails off is a pang in her heart, an emotion she understands all too well. “It’s hard to go back,” she finishes for him, and he nods.

“It’s not all bad. I get my own shop! I’m learning new techniques, too. Did you notice the pockets?” On the inner right hand side there’s a pouch that’s cleverly tucked in near the seam of the cape, held shut with a little bone button. “You can fit a whole length of wire in there.” He’s radiating pride.

“This is amazing,” she comments, taking this as an opportunity to investigate the garment more closely. There is a hood with fastenings that draw it tight around the head, too – a solid shield against the cold and prying eyes that might be looking for a hint of copper braids. “Do you have another like it? It’s perfect.”

“Similar, but not quite identical.” A little wrinkle forms between his eyes. He puts a hand on her forearm, stopping her inspection. “Perfect for _what_? What are you doing here?”

It’s a question that if she’d been buying gear from a stranger she would be able to go without answering. But this is Teb, and she can’t cast his questions aside – or, worse, lie. “I’m… I’m going to the Sacred Lands.” She clears her throat. “…With a friend. It’s kind of a weird situation. Please don’t–”

The smile he gives her catches her defenseless. “Aloy, I’m not going to tell anyone I saw you if you’re not ready for it yet.”

“…Thank you.”

“Now then.” Teb is suddenly all business, clapping his hands on his thighs as he stands to go to his workbench. “What kind of gear are you looking for?”

The change in pace is one she’s grateful for. Everything about what he’s done, really, she’s grateful for. “Well, I’d hoped for something that’ll let us move incognito. It’s not the end of the world if someone recognizes us, but I’d rather not have all the…” she waves her hand in a lazy, vaguely-defined circle. “Attention. The rest depends a lot on the conditions in the valley, and in…” This is where things get tricky. “Devil’s Grief.”

Teb’s quick hands slow, then go still. “Well,” he begins, slowly. “There’s been a lot of snow in the valley. The western cirque is in pretty deep, but it hasn’t been anything particularly unusual for the season. Devil’s Grief, though, I don’t-”

“Aloy? Are you in here?” The voice that drifts in through the doorway cuts Teb off, and Aloy releases a relieved sigh beneath her breath. Avad’s found her and provided the perfect interruption from having to answer a difficult question.

“Come on down,” she replies, turning her attention back to Teb. “So I’ll need good cold weather gear both for myself and for him.”

Teb’s not looking at her. He’s staring at Avad with wide eyes, mouth opened in shocked silence. He scrambles to stand, looking to her for confirmation and then back at the other man. Avad raises his eyebrows. “Aloy, you’re smuggling the _Sun-King_ into the Sacred Lands?”

Avad blinks at her, and she cringes. “Ah, I’m being smuggled now? I wonder what Marad would say about that,” he says, raising his eyebrows. Aloy doesn’t reply beyond a faint nod. 

Then his attention turns fully to Teb, clasping the Stitcher’s forearms with surprising warmth. “Teb. It’s good to see you. I had heard word that you were planning on staying in the Sundom, and I can’t tell you how glad I am to see that is the case.”

The rest of their warm greetings float on the edge of Aloy’s awareness as she finds herself drawing inward. Of course Teb would know the king. He had come to the Battle for the Spire, after all, and it would seem that he _hadn’t_ slipped into the wilds afterwards. At this point, they probably know each other better than either of them knows her. 

For that, she has no one to blame except herself, which just makes her feel more out of place, more terrible. She’d expected Avad would be recognized by the Carja guard posted here. This, though, is entirely different. If she’d been caught off guard by Teb’s presence, then his friendly rapport with the King has sent her reeling. In the space of less than a day she’s gone from feeling like she is in a position of authority to being the girl on the outskirts – just like she’s always been.

“Aloy?”

She jerks from the indulgent pool of self-pity her mind is swimming in, blinking up into Avad’s face. His expression is one of open concern. “Sorry, what was that?”

Avad’s lips draw into a thin line. He doesn’t ask any further probing questions, though, and relief at that washes over her. “There are quarters being prepared for us at the fort. I wanted to see if you would like to accompany me there.”

 _Ah._ Of course. There’s no doubt in her mind that Avad is looking forward to spending a night indoors, even if being around other people again is having the exact opposite effect on her. She glances at Teb, catching him giving her an encouraging smile and nod. “I… You’re not planning on going anywhere, right? We can come back later?” The words sound so stupid even as she speaks them, but she’s floundering for something to grasp. Teb provides it and it’s just one more debt she owes him when he doesn’t tease her for her foolishness.

“I’ll be here,” he says gently. Then, he looks back at Avad, chewing the inside of his cheek thoughtfully. “It’ll take me a few days to get something prepared for His Luminance to wear, I don’t think I have anything already made that’ll fit well enough if the weather takes a turn for the worse.”

“That’ll be perfect.” Aloy goes to undo the clasp that holds the cloak in place, but Teb’s hand on her arm stills her.

“Hold onto it for now,” he says with a smile. “There are some modifications I want to make to it before you leave, but we have plenty of time for that later. If you don’t mind, I’ll head to the fort with you.”

Her eyebrows draw together. “I – Of course you can, but… uh… What do you need there?”

"Aloy," Teb says with a little laugh. "I live there. It's late enough that Balahn will be waiting for me."

She frowns at him. "What, merchants have to check in with him every night or something?" She turns her attention to Avad, thinking that this must be the doing of the king in some way - a royal decree of some kind or another, requiring an evening collection of attendance for taxation or other administrative functions.

But what she sees is Avad beaming at Teb. "You've made things official, then?"

"We have." Teb is definitely blushing now, but she’s the one who feels like she's been blindsided by a Broadhead. "Aloy, Balahn and I are.... Well, we met in Meridian, and just..."

Aloy stares at Teb and Avad for a long minute, waiting for the punchline of some kind of joke before realizing that if there is one, it's her. "Of course you are," she finally says. All she can think is that she needs to drag Teb back to All-Mother mountain herself, that the heat in Meridian has somehow addled his mind. Balahn. The man who defended a murderer and slaver. _That_ Balahn. Part of her wants to disappear. The other part wants to set Daytower on fire. 

The only thing she can agree with herself on is that she just wants to sleep, as though that'll solve every problem that the day has dropped at her feet. It can't hurt to try.


	9. Chapter 9

Morning’s pale light filters in through the windows of the fort, casting a gentle glow over the sitting area of Avad’s suite and lazy illumination across Teb’s makeshift workshop. Something has been worked into the glass so that the sunrise paints soft little prisms in the air, dancing over bundled cloth and leather. The beauty of it is lost on Aloy. Instead, she frowns down at the stitcher from her perch in one of the windowsills, brooding as he unbundles the tools he’ll need for the day. 

She’s still fixated on the bombshell he had dropped on her the previous evening. After a sleepless night thinking on it, she’s even more annoyed than before. News that Teb has set up at Daytower for reasons beyond shards shouldn’t surprise her, and certainly shouldn’t bother her – but it does, for reasons she’s unable to define to herself or anyone else. 

“I can’t believe that you’ve paired with _Balahn_ ,” she says abruptly.

Teb sighs, looking up from the rabbit fur he’s laying out. “He’s a good man, Aloy. I thought you would be happy for me.”

The note of betrayal in his voice stings a little, and Aloy bites her lip. “I – I am happy for you. Really. It’s just…” 

There’s noise from the doorway and she glances up as Avad comes into the room, followed by an attendant pushing a cart piled high with what could be breakfast for twenty men. He’s carrying a cup of steaming tea along with a blessed interruption from the difficult conversation. 

“My apologies for the delay. I was beginning to think no one here even knew what tea was.” There’s a note of dry irritation in his voice, and Aloy wonders if the market vendors and kitchen staff were unclear on the concept of tea, or the concept of the Sun-King on a mission to find it. Amused, she reaches to take the cup from him when he offers it to her. “It isn’t quite the same blend as before, but I hope it will still be to your liking.”

Out of the corner of her eye Teb goes slack-jawed and she very deliberately looks away from him, focusing instead on the king’s earnest smile. She takes a sip of the spicy tea, then nods her approval. “It’s wonderful, thank you.”

Avad seems to relax as soon as she speaks. “Let me know if you want anything different. I’d like to restock while we are here, so I will be able to customize the blend for you.” 

“I trust your judgment,” Aloy says, giving him a faint smile. Thin as it may be, it feels honest on her face.

For a moment he just stands beside her in the thin light, and Aloy bites her lip as she looks him over. His hair, which she knows now as an unruly tangle of black curls, is tucked away beneath a headdress that’s more like the metal-winged crown her mental image of him wears. The messy growth of hair on his face has been shaved back to his customary mustache and goatee. He smells faintly of perfumed soap instead of wood smoke and the crisp water of a mountain stream.

One night at Daytower is all it’s taken to turn him back into Sun-King Avad, but he still insists on personally bringing her tea. That’s a nail in her perception of Avad-the-king. She thumbs at the rim of her cup as Avad goes to Teb’s side. The two men speak quietly for a few minutes, leaving her to her tea and contemplation of the fort outside. Merchants have begun filling the small marketplace with their color and sound, the first waking stretches of the day to come.

“…Anyway, I think you should talk to him before you make any judgments.”

Teb’s voice pulls her from her thoughts, and she blinks. _Balahn,_ she reminds herself sternly. _He’s talking about Balahn._

Curling on herself, she rests her chin on her folded knees and leans heavily against the thick window. “I don’t trust him,” she mutters, giving them a sidelong glance. Teb uses a pin to mark off Avad’s armpit, an exasperated frown on his face when he looks up at her.

“Why not?” 

To her surprise, it’s Avad who asks. Throughout most of their discussion over the last evening and this morning he has kept quiet, seeming troubled but content to let the two Nora hash out their conflict. He is a smart man, after all.

She bites her lip. The conversation takes a different weight when it’s with Avad. Balahn is a commander in his army and his longtime friend, besides. “The way he talked about Zaid, I just…” She remembers the way Zaid smiled at her, bared teeth and hungry eyes. It’s the kind of memory that only grows harsher the more she thinks on it, rather than easing with time. She thumbs the hem of her cloak then sighs, swinging her feet to the rough stone floor. “…You’re right. I’ll be back.”

“Right now?” Teb gapes.

“Good.” Avad gestures to the cart and wide spread of food, the variety and amount not at all what she’s accustomed to. “Bring something to eat. I recommend one of the steamed buns - I think they will be to your tastes. I had them prepare extra.”

That gets her another completely bewildered look from the stitcher, and she gives him a crooked smile. It is the only response she has for the way the Sun-King himself has learned her taste well enough to not only suggest – but obtain! – food that he thinks she’ll like. She paws through the dishes until she finds a covered platter of cream-colored dough, perfectly sized to fit in the palm of her hand. What should probably concern her about that is that he’s absolutely right: the soft bun, stuffed with marinated and shredded boar meat, is delicious. She takes an extra piece with her when she leaves.

* * *

 

Even with the help of her Focus, Aloy struggles to track Balahn down. The huge amount of foot traffic in such a small area lights her HUD up in a confused jumble of tracks, so she is forced to deactivate it. Rost would be horrified to learn how helpless a tracker she makes without the guidance of the Old Ones. By the time she catches his trail, her temper has flared to new life. She walks with purpose down the hallways of the fort, completely ignoring the questioning looks she receives from some soldiers even as they stand to attention when she passes them. 

When she ducks through a last low entryway, she finds herself inside a large room that looks like it could contain a full squadron of armored soldiers. There are only a handful of men currently occupying the space, though. She thinks Walid might be there as well, but without using her Focus, she can’t be sure – his feathered helmet obscures too much of his face. Either way, her attention lies elsewhere. Balahn isn’t wearing his helmet, so she recognizes him in an instant. 

They’re standing around a long table painted with a map of the northeastern borders of the Sundom, extending to the Hunter’s Gathering to the east, and Free Heap to the west. Little colored markers indicate key positions, and there’s just a moment where Aloy is distracted from her goal in the face of her curiosity. Luckily, she’s able to scan the map with her Focus and store it away for later – right now, her attention needs to be on the Carja captain who's looked up at her, clearly startled by her appearance.

“Aloy. What a pleasant surprise,” Balahn greets her, turning his full attention to her. A welcome smile crosses his face but when he meets her gaze, he pauses, lips pursed. There’s an almost-sharp flicker in his eyes, a moment of emotion beneath his cool exterior which raises her hackles all over again. “It looks like you are a few steps ahead of me.”

“What?” That isn’t the greeting she’s been expecting.

Balahn nods at the soldiers, who salute, bow to her, and take their leave. “Please, sit,” the commander says, motioning toward a chair at one end of the table. “I was planning on requesting an audience with you this evening. I understand you and His Radiance will be staying with us for a few days before you get back on the road to…?”

Next to the chair, Aloy pauses. She does not sit, a frown tugging at her mouth. Her immediate instinct is to shut him out completely, and it’s only thoughts of Teb that keep her from snapping at him. All the same, she doesn’t feel particularly charitable. “…The Sacred Lands."

That earns her a short sigh, a little bit of frustration showing in the set of Balahn’s mouth. “Can you be any more specific?”

“Yes.”

“ _Will_ you be?”

“No.”

Balahn frowns at her, his irritation now obvious. “…Aloy, please understand, I have no doubt that he is safe with you. It is a matter of personal interest, not professional – I’m asking you as a friend, both his and yours.”

Without thinking she’s shifted into a defensive posture, crossing her arms over her chest. “Okay. As a _friend_ , then, what are your intentions with Teb?”

A moment of confusion passes through his eyes, his mouth opening to form a question he doesn’t bother to ask. Instead, he clenches his jaw, his lips going thin with an irritation that she finds somewhat gratifying. From the moment she’d arrived at Daytower, she’d felt that she was scrambling to keep up. Now, though, she’s finally gained an advantage.

“What does that have to do with –” Taking a sharp intake of breath through his teeth, Balahn forces his composure. When he exhales again, slow, the annoyance is still in his eyes, but most of the emotion has been replaced by a cool and professional cover. “Alright, Aloy. We can talk about our _intentions_ , if that is what you want. What are _your_ intentions with Avad?”

As quickly as she’d found it, she’s lost the advantage again. The question catches her off-guard, an arrow out of a clear blue sky. Her eyes narrow, and when she speaks, her voice is soft. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Sun and _shadow,_ I know you’re not a fool.” Balahn hisses, beginning to pace like a caged animal. Frustrated. “I’m talking about why Avad was asking every member of the kitchen staff – and some of the merchants! – about where he could find _wild ember tea.”_

If his first volley was a near miss, this is a dead hit. Aloy feels the blood drain rapidly from her head, only to return in a rush that fills her cheeks with heat so quickly she actually feels a little woozy. “He likes it,” she snaps, finding it hard to meet the commander’s eyes. She does, though, because she doesn’t want to be the one to back down.

Balahn barks out a laugh. “Oh, no, he was quite clear. He wanted it for _you._ ”

Whether she’s more angry or embarrassed, she can’t be sure. Anger is the easier emotion to channel, though, because she’s angry over being embarrassed. “ _For f_ \-- fine! _Fine.”_ She straightens, hands balling into fists at her side, into a stance more suited to fighting than arguing. Still, she avoids answering his question. “What does it matter, anyway? Avad is an adult - he can make his own choices.”

“So is Teb!” he exclaims, slapping his hands down on the table hard enough that a few of the little pieces on the map are knocked over. 

As quickly as the frustration boils over in him, it’s gone again. He breathes slowly, looking away from her. Quietly, carefully, he takes the time to set the markers back into their original places. After another long, measured breath, he closes his eyes, massaging the bridge of his nose. His ability to manage his emotions is admirable, even if she’s been doing her best to goad him into losing his composure again. Anger is easy for her to respond to, especially when she feels so off-balance herself.

Quiet, mournful regret is another matter entirely. 

His voice is soft when he finally begins to speak. “What I want from Teb is simple. I want to be the man he sees in me – so my intention, you could say, is love.” The lines around his eyes, when he raises his gaze to her, are tight. “That is all it has ever been.”

This would be the perfect opportunity to stand down. But standing down goes too much against her nature, especially when she’s feeling trapped – through not necessarily through the fault of the man standing across from her.

“Yeah, well, forgive me if that doesn’t mean much to me,” she practically spits. Frustration gives its own unique flavor to her voice. “If something happens to him, are you going to stick your head up your ass until I have to come and pull it out for you _again_?” 

The memory rises in her thoughts like bile in the back of her throat. The damp cellar, the smell of human fear and desperation. The harsh sound of jeering laughter - not from bandits, but from decorated Carja soldiers. She’d only been a few weeks out of the Sacred Lands, then, had only been exposed to the kind of cruelty that left children dead in the snow. It turned out that murder wasn’t the worst secret lurking in the hearts of men. Zaid’s smile cuts through her mind, a flashed threat that had awoken an animal fear in her.

It’s a memory that comes easy to her nightmares – Helis’s face, yes, but Zaid’s grin, dripping with a malice and horror she has no name for. 

The look she gets from Balahn is its exact opposite. In his eyes there is hurt. There is anguish. There is a man who feels the weight of his mistakes with a pain more acute than any she can inflict on him. 

“…Ah. Of course.” He sets his hands, palms down, on the table. Shoulders hunched slightly, he avoids her eyes. “Aloy, there are not enough words in any language to express how… how much my failings in that matter follow my every footstep. I have lived so long under the shadow of my decisions, and I… I considered more than once that perhaps I am not suited to command. But…”

He trails off, rubbing the back of his gloved hand with the pad of his thumb. He looks back to her and something soft has entered his gaze. “Who is to say that my replacement would do any better? At least I have the weight of my own mistakes to keep my feet on the Sun’s path.”

It seems like a long time before he speaks again. Aloy almost thinks she should try another jab, because she preferred his ire to this… whatever this is. The force that had driven her to anger has leaked from her, though; a Bellowback with a ruptured tank, floundering without fire.

Balahn seems to steel himself and looks back at her, mouth twisted into a smile lacking any cheer. “I want to be better. I _need_ to be better. For Teb, but also for myself. If you don’t trust me, I cannot say that I blame you. I just ask for a chance to show you that I can be worthy of your trust.”

Put on the spot, Aloy nibbles at her lower lip. Then she casts her eyes aside. She _should_ be angry. Goddess damn him, she _wants_ to be. She _was!_

Now that anger has gone, though, and instead she sees him for what he really is: a man who made a mistake. A terrible mistake, to be certain, but a mistake all the same.

Slowly, she sits in the chair he offered, rounding her shoulders against her own discomfort. The conversation is far from over, of course, but now they can just… talk. It’s a refreshing idea, in truth, for a woman used to her spear settling any disagreements for her. 

Balahn grabs a bottle of dark liquid from a nearby chest, along with a pair of goblets that appear to be fashioned from Thunderjaw plates, sanded down with precision. They even have their Cauldron marks intact, though she doubts anyone in the fort knows what they mean. He uncorks the bottle, fills each goblet, slides one across the table to her. Suspicious, she sniffs at it.

The liquid has a fruity aroma beneath the sharp bite of alcohol. Helpfully, her Focus lights up: _Wine, Brightmarket terroir, full-bodied with notes of blackberry and low in tannins._

As usual, half the terms make no sense to her – more, maybe, thanks to her lack of knowledge about wine tasting – but all she really cares about is that it isn’t poison. It isn’t that she thinks Balahn is going to try and harm her, but her sense of caution is too finely-honed. 

“Fancy,” she mutters into the glass, finding the whole situation completely ridiculous.

“You are our honored guest,” he replies, a hint of mirth returning to his eyes. He slides into a seat opposite her, swirling his goblet thoughtfully. “I’m glad you’re here, Aloy.”

Distracted by her attempts to get her Focus to actually define some of the words it’s given her, her head jerks up. “You are? Even after I, uh… ” Putting it into words, she feels a little ashamed of her outburst.

“That is exactly _why_ I’m glad.” He smiles ruefully, taking a sip of his wine. “I’ve been meaning to… Well. To say I wanted to explain myself is not entirely true, but neither is saying I wanted to apologize. What you saw, what happened - I was the one who should have put an end to it.”

Aloy still finds it hard to look him in the eye. Instead she swirls her wine glass, watching the way the liquid gathers into little lines that slowly drip back down. “It was horrible,” she whispers.

“I can only imagine.” Balahn doesn’t drink, instead looking at her with eyes so earnest that she thinks that she understands what Teb might see in him. “I’m so sorry.”

She sighs, then takes a long sip of her wine, trying to banish the memories. “It isn’t your fault he was a monster. That’s on him.”

The general snorts, frustrated. “It is, though! I should have let that woman rip him to shreds and instead I defended him – twice! _Twice!_ I served with him in the Liberation, thought that there was no way he could be the man she told me he was. I knew him since I was basic infantry, and I just couldn’t believe that the Zaid I knew could… that he could do…”

Aloy reaches for him, places her hand on his arm. He flinches as though he’s afraid she intends to hurt him, and then slowly relaxes. “It’s not your fault he was a good actor.”

When he looks at her, there’s a wry smile on his face. “You know what it’s like, then? Finding out your ally - your friend – is really a monster?”

“I… I can’t say I do.”

Something in her stills and goes quiet, a feeling that is normally fierce and angry reduced to bitter loneliness. It’s hollow, sad, the force that pushed her into life as a ghost. Abruptly, though, she realizes that she’s only ever known the opposite: the feeling that someone is worthy of derision, only to find the goodness in them. A clear example is sitting across from her. Another is only a few hundred yards away.

Rather than give that any more thought, she takes a little sip of wine. It’s good; not nearly as astringent as she’s used to finding alcoholic drinks. The two sit and drink in companionable quiet.

Then, Balahn drops a question like an armed Blaze canister.

“So, do you really like the taste of wild ember tea?”

It’s all she can do to keep from choking on the sip of wine she’s just taken, and she coughs. She’d really hoped that the discussion of his sins would be enough to make him forget his own interrogation. She takes another sip of wine, more like a gulp this time. Then another. His eyebrows raise, and he quietly pushes the bottle toward her. 

For a second, she considers the ramifications of throwing the bottle at him as a distraction. But she’s tired, so instead she closes her eyes and rubs a hand across her forehead. Thanks to the tribe’s xenophobia and Avad’s naiveté toward traditional Nora medicine, he’s been entirely in the dark about how they have always been able to maintain a sustainable population. The degree she’s been trying not to think too much about it, though, never occurred to her until she’s finally been put on the spot.

When she opens her eyes again, she gives him a measured stare. She picks up the offered bottle of wine and pours – only once her goblet is full does she deign to answer him.

“Balahn? I _fucking hate_ it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks to jillian, kenzie, and larissa for being my personal cheer squad and helping me rope my scattered words into some semblance of a story worth reading <3  
> Someday i'll write a fic about how teb and balahn got together!


	10. Chapter 10

It’s late. The Sun vanished into the dark West hours ago, and there’s been no sign of Aloy – or Balahn, for that matter. All he’s been able to get out of the various staff around the fort are shrugs or confused stares along with sense of shock that they’re suddenly being questioned by their king. Sending Teb to get answers doesn’t prove any more fruitful.

“Do you think they’ve killed each other?” Teb asks, pushing his half-eaten plate of food aside and nervously drumming his fingers on the wooden tabletop. It’s clearly supposed to be a joke, but the tension in his shoulders ruins the effect.

Avad pokes at a potato. “I am fairly certain Aloy would have the upper hand.” He looks up at Teb, a wry smile twisting his lips. “But then the whole garrison would be on her, and we probably would have heard something.”

After the remains of their meals are cleared away, they spend a little more time working on the base of Avad’s new winter gear. Teb is in the process of writing down the name of a cobbler who will be able to set the king up with more useful footwear when a sound drifts toward them from down the hall.

It’s the sound of singing, a duet of male and female voices that are equally off-key and out of tempo with each other. Avad, with his musical ear, cringes. “Seems they’ve killed song instead of each other.”

Teb is at the door just in time to open it as Aloy and Balahn stumble in. She’s grinning crookedly, eyes half-closed, limbs moving with an absolute lack of the lithe confidence he’s always seen in her. She lurches forward, and instinctively Avad catches her. She leans against him heavily, and he can smell the wine on her breath as she smiles serenely up at him. His heart catches in his throat.

“Hi. We had wine. Did you know Brightmarket makes – it’s the. Very good.”

“Very,” Balahn agrees, from where he’s looped his arms around Teb’s shoulders. “Aloy and I are bonded brothers now!”

“Siblings?” Avad offers gently.

Swiveling her head up to look at him, Aloy frowns deeply. “No. It’s – it’s better when it’s. You know.”

“Alliteration?”

“Mmm.” She smiles again, eyelids fluttering shut. “You’re so smart.”

“And you’re so drunk,” he says, laughing a little. He looks to Teb for help, but the stitcher is busy handling his partner. “Let’s get you some water - and put you in bed.”

“Bed sounds good,” she agrees, still leaning into him. Then she goes still, squinting at the room. “Where is bed, again?”

“I’ll see you in the morning,” Teb says, trying to sound exasperated but mostly looking amused as Balahn presses sloppy kisses across his partner’s shoulder and cheek, mumbling words of affection under his breath. Of all the possible results of their meeting, indulging in entirely too much wine is almost the best they could have hoped for. “If you need help with her, let me know – I’ll get Balahn settled and come back down.”

“I think I can manage,” Avad replies. “But likewise.”

“It’ll be ok. He’ll probably just fall asleep.”

True to what Teb says, Balahn’s head is drooping, eyes barely open. “'Night, brother.”

“Yeah. _Yeah!_ Brother," she mumbles. "Pleasant dreams.”

The whole thing is so surreal that it takes a serious effort to keep from laughing out loud. What he wants to do is help her down the hall to her room, but in the time it takes him to get her a glass of water she’s pitched forward onto the bed, face-down. She sighs deeply, then rolls over to look up at him through ginger eyelashes. Her gaze is just a little out of focus, but she’s peering up at him, smiling.

“Here, have some water,” he quickly says, sitting on the edge of the bed and offering her the glass. It’s mostly a sense of self-preservation that keeps him stoic. She ignores the offered water entirely.

“Had plenty to drink already.” She frowns. “Need to take my boots off. Help.”

This time, he does laugh. She raises her leg, wiggling her foot at him. Her lips thin into an obstinate frown when he doesn’t immediately help her with her boot. She wiggles it again – but more violently, like she’s kicking the air. He stares at her for a long minute, and her frown deepens.

“Let’s make a deal,” Avad offers, kneeling beside the bed. “You drink this, and I will take off your boots.”

For a few seconds, Aloy seems to consider the offer. Then she reaches out and takes the glass. A good amount of water drips off her chin and all over her front, but the rest she manages to swallow. Then she wiggles her feet at him again, both of them this time, and he relents. With her boots off, she then tries to undo the metal plates that cover her shoulders and elbows and gets stuck halfway. She makes a frustrated noise, but before she can hurt herself, Avad is there, too – he undoes the clasps, lets her take them off.

That apparently takes more coordination than she can manage, because she pitches forward, directly into him. He catches her, holds her gently. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah. S’all. Bed’s moving a lot is all,” she mumbles grumpily into his chest. She grabs at his shirt and he sits very still while she grasps a handful of cloth, pressing it into her face. “Why’s your shirt so much softer than mine?!”

Avad bites back a laugh at the _absolutely offended_ tone of her voice. “The perks of being king.”

“I want it.”

He pauses, mid blink. “What?”

“Your shirt. I _want_ it.”

Before he can really process her demand, she’s crawling out of her _own_ top, and he quickly jumps up the moment his eyes catch sight of freckle-dusted shoulders. 

“By the _Sun!”_ he gasps, staring very pointedly at the ceiling and covering his eyes with a hand just to be certain. He feels her tugging at the hem of his shirt again. 

“C’moooon,” she whines.

Backed into a corner and seeing no other escape, Avad sighs deeply, shrugging his top over his head and passing it to her. She makes a little delighted noise, and it’s only once she stops wiggling into the fine silks does he look down.

“ _I’m_ the king now,” she proclaims. She looks ridiculous in the oversized men’s top, but she’s beaming at him. “Mmm. Smells nice.”

For just a moment, his eyes linger on her. “Let me get you some more water,” he finally says, gently. She nods. By the time he turns around with a full glass, she’s curled on her side on his bed – mouth open slightly, apparently fast asleep. He very quietly sets the glass of water on the bedside table, bringing the whole pitcher over as an afterthought, then breaths out a little laugh. He shakes his head, wondering if she’s ever actually had the kind of quantities of wine he knows Balahn is capable of drinking. From her current state, he sincerely doubts it.

“Well, I suppose your room is fine,” he mutters, because he knows there’s no way he’s going to be able to wake her. Not when she looks so comfortable, so peaceful. It’s a small price to pay, for her. 

He’s not prepared for Aloy to reach for him, grasping his hand. His heart stops for a second because she’s looking at him with clear eyes. For just a second, there’s her usual fierceness. Then, the comfortably intoxicated smile comes back. “You’re – you’re so good,” she mumbles. “So good. Make sure we have lots of tea. So much tea.”

With a gentle squeeze of her hand, Avad smiles. “Of course. Get some rest. And drink that water.”

“Mmn. Sure thing, Your Lumi-Radiance.”

Outside his room, Avad leans against the wall, clapping a hand over his mouth to keep quiet. When he’s sure he’s out of earshot, he laughs fully, then goes to get a glass of wine for himself. After this day, he’s certainly earned it.

* * *

The next morning, he knocks gently at his door. When there’s an answering grunt, he eases it open, poking his head in. Aloy is curled in a ball on the edge of the bed, a blanket pulled up to her ears and her hair a wild tangle of red. She peers up at him, eyes narrowed to slits.

“How are you feeling?” he asks, stepping into the room. He keeps his voice low and quiet – remembering all too well the way Kadaman would treat _him_ when he was wine-sick, all stomping and yelling and laughing at Avad’s misery. He’s fairly certain that if he tried that, despite the sickness, Aloy would murder him and he would very honestly deserve it. He has a bowl of soup that’s mostly just a mild salted broth, and a small bottle that contains a tincture of willow bark.

She rolls over to look up at him, her expression miserable. “Like a whole herd of Chargers are having a festival in my head. But it’s not just that.” Slowly, she sits up, then pitches back down as a wave of nausea clearly grabs her. Gently, he reaches out to rub her shoulder. She moves into the touch. “I think something I ate had gone off. Or I’ve caught some kind of sickness. It feels like my guts are trying to escape.”

It takes everything in him not to laugh. This answers one of his questions: she _hasn’t_ ever been wine-sick, and has only heard about the headache that accompanies it, rather than the whole-body misery. “No, that’s just the drink getting its revenge.”

“This is hell,” she mumbles. “This must be hell. Hell in a hangover, just like Travis said.”

Hell? Travis? Hangover? Avad blinks at the unfamiliar words, but Aloy doesn’t explain. From context, he has a pretty good idea of what they mean, though the odd name Travis raises more questions that he can log into the massive tome of them he’s been gathering in his mind. He sets the broth at the side of her table, notes that there’s still water left in the pitcher – he refills her glass, adds a few drops of the tincture.

“Well. I’m happy to help chase the Chargers away, though I’m not sure how to deal with... Hell, or Travis.”

Under his touch she shifts so he’s rubbing her back now, clearly appreciating the touch. “Mmm. Balahn told me that you used to try and out-drink Ersa. Bet she taught you a few good lessons about it.”

The memory is an abrupt and bitter one, guilt and sadness bubbling up in him in equal parts. It makes him smile, a little sadly. “That she did.” Most of the memory is a good one, but his own mistakes in his dealings with Aloy – and Ersa – are still little shards in his mind. “I don’t remember most of them, of course. I remember a lot more about the pain of the next morning. You’re… You still have your memories of last night?”

Aloy ducks her head and there’s pink rising in her cheeks. She’s still wearing his shirt, though it’s more like a loose tunic on her. “I. Uh. Yeah. I’m sorry. And… thank you.”

Quickly, he shakes his head. “Don’t worry about it. Your shirt was a little tight, though.”

Her laughter rings out like music and she covers her mouth with her hand, hazel eyes shining. “Stop trying to trick me. I remember what happened.”

“Alright, I admit it.” He holds his hands up, surrendering. “You’ve caught me.” 

For a second she looks at him, then her eyes dart away. “I wish you _had_ put it on.”

 When she says it, she ducks under his shirt, so that just her eyes and forehead show from over the collar. The pink darkens to red.

“Invite me the next time you and Balahn decide to share a bottle, and maybe I will.”

“Three.”

Confused, he blinks. “Three…?”

“There were three bottles.” She clutches the glass of water, looking a little pale now that her embarrassment is fading. While he stares at her with dawning horror, she takes a sip, then gags a little. “It’s so bitter!”

“That’s the willow. It will help, I promise.” He starts to rub her shoulder again, and she shudders a little as another wave of nausea passes through her. In an act that clearly takes significant effort, she takes another sip, closing her eyes. “Do you need me to get you a pan?”

“I think I’m ok.” She shakes her head. “Can you ask the sun to go away for a little while, though?”

A quick grin crosses his face, and he puts his hand over his heart. “I will. I warn you, the message can take some time to reach it, though, so it might be a few hours before you notice any change. Until then, I suggest the use of curtains.”

“Ass,” she mumbles, but she’s grinning, and pokes him with a toe that emerges from her cocoon of blankets.

Once she’s finished the water, she turns her attention to the soup. She closes her eyes and takes a little testing sip, like she’s making sure her body won’t reject it. “Are you going to be working with Teb again today?”

Avad nods. “He thinks it will take about four days to get everything in order, if that’s alright.”

“Yeah. The most important thing is that you’re set up. Teb’s gonna do the best job out of anyone else, so I don’t mind waiting.”

For a second, he hesitates. “He also mentioned that Warden Janeva and his wife, Iasia, are due to arrive soon. I would like to have a meal together – I have some matters of state to discuss with them, and I thought you might be happy to see Janeva again.”

Aloy blinks at him, tucking a braid behind her ear. “S-sure.” There’s a note of trepidation in her tone that surprises him a little, but he chalks it up to her wine-sickness. “He has a wife?”

A wry grin finds its way onto his lips. “And what a wife she is. I’m certain the two of you will have plenty to discuss.” That’s putting it mildly - but with Iasia’s interest in mechanics and Aloy’s knowledge of machines, the pair will have little trouble finding common ground. “I’m going to get back to Teb unless there’s anything else you need.”

“Since you can’t hurry the sun up anymore, I should be fine.” She grins at him. “I’m gonna try to sleep a little more, I think.”

“Of course.” Avad points toward a rope that’s near the bed. “If you need anything, just ring that.”

The smile she gives him is better than any thanks he could ask for.

* * *

Over the next few days, their life at the fort assumes a new rhythm every bit as easy as the one they’d adopted on the trail. Now that they're no longer on the trail, Aloy seems to have no trouble at all waking before the sun rises to watch Avad and the other soldiers stationed at the garrison perform dawn prayers, and sits quietly nearby again for evening prayers. It’s hard for him to maintain his focus on the singing when her face is cast in the warm red light of either the sunset or the fire – depending on the cloud cover – but to hear and feel the hymns again brings him a great deal of comfort. 

There’s a sadness in him too, though, as he finds that he misses their quiet mornings and their almost-intimate evenings. Here, more often than not, they’re accompanied by Teb, Balahn, or both.

That isn’t to say it’s bad: Avad is happy to spend time with his longtime friend, and whatever issue Aloy’d had with him seems to have been buried, because on days when he has free time, the two disappear into the mountain passes to have hunting competitions. It’s a social event, to be sure, but there’s also a practical reason for it – their prey isn’t machines, but rabbits. Teb is in desperate need of their hides, since he’s using up most of his stock to line the insides of Avad’s new Nora gear.

Once, on a day that Balahn is busy with the other soldiers, Avad joins Aloy on a trip up the mountain – it’s bitterly cold, and though he’s swaddled in one of Balahn’s coats, the fit isn’t right and the chill is able to creep through. It’s still better than anything he’d worn in the Sundom, and he’s able to spend the day with her.

Hunting rabbits, it turns out, is far more difficult than taking down Watchers. He struggles first to see them in the snow, their white coats so well camouflaged that once, one suddenly bounds out of hiding just a few feet from where he’s been crouched.

Still, they’re able to bring four in at the end of the day, and Avad is beyond exhausted – and grateful – by the time they make their way into the heat of the kitchens. Mimaw is hard at work prepping dinner for the day, and Avad gives the woman a genial smile.

“More rabbits?” she scoffs, pointing a knife at Aloy. “You swore you’d bring me a boar!”

“But I did, Mimaw,” Aloy replies, grinning. She uses both hands to gesture broadly to Avad. “Dragged in fresh from the cold.”

The woman peers at Avad, making a clucking sound and shaking her head before going back to work skinning the rabbits. “Too skinny. Better fatten him up before you bring him down again.”

“Give me some of those buns and we won’t have any trouble there,” Avad mutters, his stomach rumbling a bit at even the thought of a warm meal.

Mimaw chuckles genially, gathering an armload of warm buns and tossing them into a basket. She passes it to Aloy with a wink. “There’s some extra for you in there too, dear.” 

Aloy leans in, kisses the woman on the cheek. “This is why you’re my favorite.”

It’s hard for Avad to understand the warmth he feels seeing the pair interact, but he doesn’t try to. He just lets himself enjoy the feeling, smiling to himself. Her fawning over Aloy finished, the old woman waves her knife threateningly at him. “Now shoo, both of you! You’re dripping all over my kitchen!”

“As I’m commanded,” he says with a playful mock bow. When he straightens again, Mimaw shoves a bun, warm from the oven and almost obscenely tender, into his mouth, and it’s all he can do not to sigh with pleasure.

“Good man. Come back later, both of you - I will be making orange rolls and these rabbits will be ready for Teb.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Aloy grabs at his sleeve, ushering him out while he devours the bun. The snow on their coats is indeed melting quickly now that they’re inside, and it’s a relief to change into something both dry and better-fitting. He meets Aloy in Teb’s workshop, where she doles the buns out. Avad can’t help but notice she’s kept the lion’s share for herself, and when he reaches to grab one, she smacks his hand.

“I caught more rabbits than you, I deserve it,” she snaps with mock irritation.

“Mimaw wanted _me_ fattened up, though.”

While they argue, Teb reaches out and snatches the bun, eating it so quickly that Avad hardly notices it’s been taken. They both stare openly at him, and he just grins.

“If you aren’t going to eat Mimaw’s cooking while it’s still warm, I will. I’m no fool.”

“Steal my food again and we’ll see about that,” Aloy grumbles through a grin.

As he watches the two of them, that soft happiness creeps up on him again, warming him through to the tips of his toes despite the cold bite in the air. He knows what it’s coming from, now - everything here is unlike it’s been for years, soldiers and staff alike no longer toiling beneath a specter of fear or the worry of loved ones trapped at Sunfall.

That isn’t all, though. It’s from something on a much smaller, more personal scale. It’s the way Aloy’s hazel eyes are soft and shining, from the tension that he’s finally realizing isn’t clinging to her limbs in the same way he holds his own. It’s her happiness as she wrestles Teb over extra buns, her easy joy somehow turning into _his._  

Avad thinks that is all it needs to be.

* * *

They’ve settled in to relax until dinner when a cry reaches them from down the hall.

“ _Stormbird!”_

Instantly alert, Aloy leaps to the window, pushing it open to look outside. Avad and Teb scramble to their feet as well, joining her. The sight outside makes Avad’s heart stop. The great machine – the same one they’d passed on their way to the fort – has changed its path, and he can see the red of its lens as its wings cut like a knife through the clouds and flurries of snow. Below, tiny figures rush up the path. He can barely make out the flag that marks one as a merchant, and a handful of other travelers that seem to be dressed in military garb.

_Janeva._

Avad’s breath hitches. The heavy armor of infantry is no good against a machine, and he’s heard that the metal will attract lightning under the wrong circumstances. Circumstances like an attack by a giant machine that uses lightning as its primary defense, for example.

“They're sitting ducks out there,” Aloy hisses. She leaps down from the window, every bit as nimble as the swooping machine outside, scooping her pack with one hand and another bun in the other. Like a flash, she’s through the door. She moves at a dead sprint down the hall, faster than Avad thinks he himself has ever been, and he can’t seem to catch up no matter how hard he pushes himself. He passes Teb all the same, panic driving him to a speed he’s never known before.

By the time he reaches the roof, he’s just in time to see Aloy throw herself over the side of a parapet, a curved steel hook securing her as she rappels over the edge.

Avad, breathless, hits the balustrade as Aloy touches down on the mountain. Against the dark stone and white snow her hair is a brazen marker, and his attention is torn. There’s so much happening all at once and he doesn’t know what he should be focusing on. It’s with absolute terror that he realizes that while Aloy has her pack with weapons and ammunition, she’s only dressed in a casual tunic and leggings, barely protection enough from the cold – against the might of a Stormbird, she might as well be wearing paper.

Heart in his throat, all he can do is watch.

The red flame of her hair helps him track her as she makes her way perpendicular to the road, cutting a wide path so that she’s flanking the machine. Then she stops, and he can tell she’s positioned herself to try and draw it away from the fort and the lone figures – high above, the Stormbird beats its wings with enough power that they can feel the tempest each flap creates even from the fort. Its cry rends the air as it gathers power, the circular cannon on its chest glowing so brightly it hurts to look at. 

 _It’s going to fire,_ Avad realizes, horrified. There’s a detachment of soldiers hurrying down the path to try and head off the attack, but it’s far too late. Their bows are suited to closer combat and tangles with smaller machines, not something as massive and high in the air as the Stormbird.

Something arcs through the air nearly faster than he can see, its high-pitched whining a telltale song of barely-contained energy in flight. He recognizes the sound in an instant: a Tearblast arrow, the same he’d used to detonate the Trampler. The arrow hits the Stormbird directly in its wing, and a second later, a deafening explosion echoes across the cliffs. One of the parts he knows keeps the machine aloft is ripped clear from the rest of the wing, a huge chunk of metal that crashes into the cliffside. The Stormbird’s electrical blast is sent harmlessly off-target as it wheels to catch itself, and even at this distance Avad can taste the lightning-snap of its discharge on the air.

That hit is enough to redirect its attention. The huge machine flaps frantically as it tries to correct for the damage to its wing, and off balance, it turns in the air to face its new target. From the way she’s standing and the angle of her arms, Avad can guess that Aloy is screaming expletives at it – but between the distance, the blast, and his already troubled hearing, he can’t make out any of the words.

Below, the small group has reached the start of the switchbacks that mark the beginning of the climb to Daytower. Avad quickly makes his way to the stairs so he can meet them partway up, Janeva practically dragging the panting merchant behind him. As soon as he's released, the man doubles over completely, looking like he’s about to pass out. 

“Get me a bow,” Janeva hisses, pale despite his bravado. “She needs backup.”

Avad glances toward the place Aloy is standing, and for a long minute, he can’t speak. Like a brand new machine that puts the danger of the Thunderjaw to shame, she scrambles up the cliff, pulling herself to a vantage point that keeps her shielded from the lightning of the Stormbird’s cannon while bringing herself into a better range from which to attack. The whine-burst of another Tearblast arrow detonation is audible even over the enraged screams of the machine.

“No. She’s used to hunting alone - if she’s worrying about you, too, it’ll be more dangerous for you both.”

Teb is the one who speaks, voice full of quiet conviction. Avad blinks down at the stitcher in surprise, but nods quickly.

“Get everyone inside – keep the noncombatants safe. That means you, too, Teb.”

The slight man levels Avad with a hard gaze. “That also means _you,_ Your Radiance.”

They stare at each other, wordlessly facing off. It’s Janeva who breaks the silence. “For _fuck’s sake_ , that means _both_ of you.” He grabs Teb’s sleeve with one hand, Avad’s with the other, and drags them both up along the path. Only after they’ve passed the first gate does he let them go, and Avad immediately turns his attention back to the terrifying conflict happening in the valley. The Stormbird has circled high above, so high now that he thinks it might be flying away.

For a moment, it hangs there – then wheels in the air, tucking its wings back and into a horrifying stoop. The air around it screams from the speed and energy as it falls, blue sparks almost too bright to look at flashing along the metal of its body. Nearby trees and shrubs ignite where they fall, and the machine flaps hard just before it crashes into the side of the mountain. A massive cloud of dust and smoke goes up, a dust storm more vicious than any braved by the Kestrels, and he loses sight of Aloy completely. 

With a strangled cry, he lurches forward. Janeva catches him and holds him in place. “Wait,” he says softly. “ _Wait._ ” 

A moment later, a tiny figure darts out of the cloud of dust, bow raised and drawn. Her next shot punches through the reinforced metal of its central cannon, and a blue flash of lightning cracks around the machine with an earthshaking explosion. Little sparks dance across the bird, overloading its circuits so when it tries to move, it instead lurches awkwardly onto its side.

“She knows what she’s doing,” Janeva says quietly; a thin comfort.

That is definitely the case, he _knows_ it’s the case, but it doesn’t make the battle any less terrifying to watch. Avad just nods, gripping the parapet a little tighter. Now that the Stormbird is on the ground, Aloy throws herself forward and swings herself up onto its shoulders. There, she adopts a wide-footed stance, and plunges her spear deep into the skull of the metal bird. Its wings flutter uselessly, jets firing weak blasts of air out of synch. She bears down harder.

Finally, the Stormbird goes still.

All around him, soldiers fly into action. Balahn directs a squadron to meet Aloy at the fallen machine, sending a quartermaster who will be able to help harvest the kill for parts before Glinthawks descend en masse. Janeva joins them before continuing on to gather up the rest of his party – Lady Iasia included – now that the danger has passed. Teb helps the merchant inside, supporting him so that he can walk on a leg swollen and twisted from his flight up the hill. All of this escapes Avad’s notice.

Instead his attention is on Aloy’s form, crouched over the body of the fallen machine. She is peaceful and still in the aftermath of the chaos, Sun reflecting off the copper in her hair, a halo painted in all the tones of a sunset.

She is radiant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> iasia and the concept of mimaws is borrowed from LarissaFae, my ally in all things carja <3 <3 luvubb


	11. Chapter 11

The fort is in chaos, a level of disarray which Balahn is trying valiantly – but still failing – to contain. Between Avad and Aloy’s presence, the Stormbird’s attack, and the arrival of Janeva’s small detachment, there’s entirely too much happening for any one man to manage effectively. Unfortunately, until Janeva returns from gathering his wife from where she’s waiting at Morning’s Watch, he’ll have to make do. The second group of noncombatants had hung back and allowed the soldiers to scout ahead, a lucky maneuver considering the ferocious machine attack. 

That isn’t the least of it, though.

When the troops had reached the carcass of the Stormbird, Aloy was nowhere to be found. Less than an hour later, Avad is roaming the halls looking for her when he notices a few drops of blood. His attention toward any signs of violence honed to painful clarity, he finds himself looking down a long hallway that makes up a less-travelled path to the guest rooms. His world narrows to those tiny droplets and the path they form, one which he follows to the door to Aloy’s suite.

Teb is also there, standing outside the closed door and bargaining with Aloy’s disembodied voice.

“Aloy, please just let me take a look,” he pleads, resting a hand against the handle and giving it an experimental jiggle. When it doesn’t budge, he lets out a short, stressed sigh. “You know I helped the medics in Meridian, right? I just want to make sure it’s – Oh, Your Radiance.” He cuts himself short as soon as he sees the look on Avad’s face.

“I’m fine, Avad,” Aloy’s voice says after a moment, quiet. “Tell Teb I’m fine. I don’t need to be sewn up.”

That isn’t entirely convincing. “It’s her arm,” Teb says quietly, motioning to a spot near the back of his bicep, not quite to the shoulder.

“I’m _fine._ ”

Trying to keep the worry from his voice, Avad places a hand on the door. “I would feel a lot better if you’d let us look.”

“I’d feel a lot better if you’d _leave me alone_.” The voice is clipped. “I’m fine. I can handle it myself.”

The dismissive tone reminds him of wild animals, of the way they hide when seriously injured. Worry makes him try a somewhat drastic tactic. “…Then this is an order. You are a Hunter’s Lodge member, and as Sun-King, I am commanding you to open this door.”

“You’re not my king.”

In another circumstance, her obstinance might entertain him, their difference in status giving him someone who treats him as an equal. Now, though, he is drowning in worry. He shifts a little closer to the door, leaning against it slightly. Teb takes a step back, and Avad is too focused to notice the way he looks away, like this is something he shouldn’t be witness to. Something private, intimate even.

“I am your traveling companion,” Avad says quietly. “I need to know how to help you tend to your injury should we encounter any unexpected problems.”

From behind the door, there is quiet. But he can hear movement inside, so he continues.

“You’re also my friend. Aloy, please let me in.”

Quiet shuffling meets him. There is a little vibration on the wood of the door, and Avad takes a step back as it cracks open. He glances at Teb, who nods – it’s an unspoken agreement, that should Aloy need stitches or other care, he’ll be there – and then steps through the narrow opening.

Inside, Aloy is turned away from him. She’s nearly naked from her shoulders to her waist, wearing only a cloth band that wraps around her breasts. Freckles, like patches of wildflowers, cross her entire torso. A part of him realizes he is transfixed – with good reason – but it isn’t the delightful freckles that keep his attention, that draw his eye. His focus, instead, is on something that twists his gut, makes him feel sadness and anger and helplessness all at once.

It is the scars.

Aloy’s pale skin is crossed with lines, both dark and light, that map out her battles, the story of her history written in glyphs he can’t read. There is bruising, too, more recent, blooming across much of her arm and shoulder. 

Just as he was expecting from Teb’s account, there is a bloody gash opening her skin like a snarl. He can see it in his mind’s eye: the explosion of the central cannon, which shakes the battlements, also sends white-hot fragments of metal across their arena. One hits Aloy in the arm, carves through her loose shirt and leaves its mark. Part of the gash is covered in cloth where she’s been trying to wrap a binding around the wound to staunch the flow of blood. Her head is turned from him, face hidden in the sweat-damp tangle of her hair.

“Oh, Aloy,” he breathes, not sure what else to say but stepping toward her. He stops himself, remembers his place. “ _Oh_.”

“It’s…” she begins, shifting uncomfortably. “It looks bad, but it isn’t. It was just a little shard. We can use it to buy some better armor later.”

Her attempt at humor makes his mouth twitch, but the ache in his chest is enough to keep him from feeling anything other than sympathetic pain. He forces himself to breathe and be calm, thinks about what he knows about Aloy: fierce, independent, willful. Amazing. What would she need from him?

It’s a simple answer – help, not pity. “This needs to be cleaned before it’s bound. Do you have any ointment? I will send for some if you don’t.”

“In my pouches – the one with the Seeker emblem.” Her voice is small and tight. “There’s hemorrhage leaf powder in there. If you mix that with spirits to make a paste, that’ll… That’ll help.”

“Do you have anything for pain?” If she doesn’t, he’ll get her something for that as well.

“Yes, there’s hintergold resin in the same pouch – but it makes me drowsy.”

“Aloy.” Avad smiles at her when she raises her face to look at him, her eyebrows knit with pain. “If that’s the case, you can sleep. You’re not in the wilds.”

The relief in her expression is palpable. “Is – is there hot water?” She sounds hopeful. 

That makes Avad smile. “As luck would have it, it would seem the king has seen fit to put you in the finest lodging. Come with me.”

For just a moment, she looks nervous. But then she takes his outstretched hand, her own shaking ever so slightly, and lets him lead her into the bathing room. Inside, he shows her the way she can either fill the shallow basin intended for washing the hands or face with hot water piped in from the furnace rooms, along with the way to activate the Blaze-fueled heating element for the main pool. Aloy stares in mute surprise, her lips parted just slightly. He has to try not to chuckle.

“Have you… have you been taking cold baths this whole time?”

Aloy doesn’t answer. Instead, she huffs a little and splashes him in the face with water from the basin.

“Ah!” He yelps, raising his hands in an attempt to shield his face. “I’m trying to help!”

The smile on her face is genuine. “Then go brew up that hintergold and get out of here while I wash off some of this grime. I’ll let you know when I’m ready for you again.”

Avad gives her a playful mock-bow, which gets another handful of water tossed his way before he can back out of the room and close the door behind him. A moment later, he hears the splash that tells him that she’s jumped into the bath without disrobing or even waiting to let the water heat up further. It’s probably still warmer than anything she’s used to having ready access to.

While she bathes, he opens the door to her rooms. Teb is still standing outside, fidgeting. The second he sees Avad, he hurries to the door. “Well?”

“She is alright,” Avad confirms. “It does not seem to be a serious wound, but I am going to help her dress it after she has a chance to wash off. Can you check with the quartermaster for razorleaf? If they have any here, I believe it will do a lot of good for her burns.”

The stitcher nods quickly, looking relieved. “Yeah, I can do that. Actually, Balahn keeps a little razorleaf plant in our rooms for when the cold chaps my lips.” A little color lights up his cheeks, but otherwise he relaxes visibly. “Give me a couple of minutes and I’ll be right back.”

While Teb gets the last few things they’ll need to care for Aloy, Avad begins the somewhat tedious task of brewing tea from the hintergold resin. It looks as though she hasn’t taken advantage of most of the room’s comforts, he notes with a private smile, lighting a small fire beneath a heavy metal kettle. He pours fresh water into it along with some of the resin, and for a few minutes he’s left to the quiet and his own thoughts – scattered as they may be. He can’t count the number of years since he last prepared hintergold tea on both hands, but he nevertheless goes through the motions as easily as though it has been only days.  The water is nearly boiling when a light tap on the door indicates Teb’s return.

“This is perfect, thank you,” he says, looking the thick leaves over with a critical eye. “If there is anything else we need, I will let you know.”

“Right.” Teb looks to the side, chewing at his lower lip. “I’m… Thank you.”

“What for?”

The stitcher glances up again, quiet and thoughtful. Finally, he speaks. “For taking care of her. I think it’s been a long time since anyone has done that.”

“More’s the pity,” Avad murmurs, brushing his thumb over the pointed end of one of the blades of razorleaf. He thinks about her in the wilds on her own, trying to tend to an injury like this without even a bed to rest in, enduring her pain in exchange for alertness. Anger bites at the back of his mind again, sharp and hot. He swallows it back. “I will find you later.” 

It isn’t that he _wants_ Teb to leave, but he thinks that the fewer people around when Aloy emerges from her bath, the better. Once the door closes, he turns his attention back to the tea. After a few minutes of simmering mildly, he pulls the pot off the heat and smells the rich, vegetal steam. Then, he uses a small knife to strip the thick outer skin off the razorleaf, exposing its cool gelled pulp. It’s methodical work that he is able to distract himself with, and by the time the door to the bathing room cracks open again, he has almost forgotten his anger.

For the first time in his memory, Aloy looks very small. She is swaddled in a silk robe that is much too large for her, her hair unbraided and dripping loose around her shoulders. “Okay,” she says quietly. “I’m ready.”

He is, too. When she slips back into the bathing room he follows her with a cup of tea and the ointments they’ll need. She sits on a stool facing away from him, hitching the robe down to expose her shoulder. Blood oozes from it, beading along the bottom edge before drawing lazy lines down her back. Avad reminds himself to breathe. _Help, not pity_.

The water in the smaller basin is steaming hot, enough to sting his fingers a bit. He braces himself, knowing full well that he is going to cause her some pain. She accepts the tea from him, bunching the robe up over her chest and holding it in place. After she’s taken a few sips of the bitter draught, she nods to him, and he begins the painstaking process of washing out the cut. He tries to ignore the way she jumps beneath his touch, the way her knuckles go white where she’s holding the robe, the blood that’s gradually staining the cloth he uses on the wound and coloring the water in the basin deep red.

Finally, though, it’s finished. “I’m going to apply the poultice,” he warns, gently. He knows it will sting. Aloy just nods.

Almost as soon as the sharp-smelling paste is dabbed across the gash, her bleeding stops. She lets a sharp hiss out between her teeth, but then breathes deeply, calms herself. “I’m okay. It’s okay.” He waits for her to take another sip of tea. “Keep going.”

Once he’s satisfied that he’s covered enough of the wound bed with the poultice, he reaches for the razorleaf pulp. That, he smears much more liberally on the burned and raw areas around her wound, cooling the inflamed skin. As he works, the tension from having the wound cleaned out begins to ease, and he is rewarded with a soft sigh. 

“What is that?” she whispers. “It feels wonderful.”

“Razorleaf,” he replies, holding out the skinned leaf for her inspection. “We use it for burns, primarily. Hardy plant. It’s edible, as well.”

It would take a fool not to notice the small smile that curls her lips and brings fluttering lightness to his chest, making his breath catch. She alternates between touching the gel-like pulp and taking sips of tea while he applies a cloth covered in hemorrhage leaf extract to the wound. Once that is in place, he bandages her arm, wiping away the blood and medicine from the rest of her skin. “I didn’t know it was medicinal. I always just avoided it.”

Knowing that razorleaf plants, fully grown, could be taller than a man and bearing thick leaves dotted with points that would easily catch and tear both skin and clothing, Avad smiles back. “A wise choice, for the most part. It prefers an arid climate, so I’d imagine you never had reason to learn about it growing up in the East.”

“I’d never seen it until I came to the Sundom, no.” She confirms. As soon as he ties off the bandage, she rotates her shoulder, closing her eyes. The dressing holds. He passes her a shirt – his shirt, in fact, seized days before but apparently remaining in her possession. She touches it lightly, then looks up at him. The hintergold tea has clearly started to affect her, from the softness settling into her features. “I don’t want to bleed on this,” she protests quietly. 

That makes his heart go tight, and he gently pushes the shirt back to her. “If you do, I’ll give you another.”

For a second, she is very still, looking down at the loose garment. Then she sets her tea down and turns away from him to dress. Avad looks back into the main room, then closes his eyes. It isn’t until she stands up that he opens them again. Aloy gently rests her hand on his upper arm, and he can feel the way she’s trembling. Probably weakness from the tea, he thinks, refusing to let himself think of anything else. He stands next to her, guiding her to the bed. Once she’s settled there, legs tucked beneath the soft blankets, he sits beside her. Without thought, it seems, she leans into him.

“Do you have a comb?” It’s a sudden idea.

“Mm? Uh, y-yeah.” Blinking quickly, Aloy sits up again, leaving only a memory of her warmth where a moment ago she’d pressed against him. She rummages briefly in her things, then procures a comb made of carved bone. The handle is worn, perfectly suited to her grip but matching his hand almost as well. He traces the lines where her fingers have made their mark over the years, closes his own fingers around them. “Why do you --? Oh. You don’t have to do that.”

When she blushes, it lights her up seemingly to the tips of her ears. “It will make it easier when you wake,” he assures her. “If you would rather I didn’t, though, please tell me.” 

“N-no, it’s just… It’s been a really long time since someone else…” her voice is very small, trailing off. She doesn’t need to finish the statement, instead shifting so that he can easily run the comb through her hair. Damp now, it’s easy to work out most of the tangles. There are a few little leaves and twigs that must have been trapped there when she’d rolled through the underbrush to find a vantage for fighting, and he now carefully frees them. His movements fall into a rhythm, methodically brushing out each section in turn. Aloy is very quiet as he works.

When he’s almost finished, she swallows. “You’re good at this,” she comments.

Avad pauses, licks his lips. When he gathers the next section, his hands are shaking. “Ah, I have some practice. I used to help my mother, when she…” Memory is a cold stone in his stomach, and he looks down at the auburn hair in his hands. “Well, she was very ill.”

While he carefully gathers her hair together, preparing to braid it, Aloy bites her lip. “I’m… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring up something that—”

“Shh.” He interrupts her. His voice is low and soothing. “You have no reason to apologize.”

“Okay,” she whispers. For a moment, he has the very strange sense that even in this private room, they are occupying a separate bubble of space, something delineated by nothing more than each other’s presence. He gathers her hair into a large, loose braid that will be easy to tend to while her shoulder heals, and wraps it around the back of her head. When he’s pinned it back, her eyelids are heavy, her head periodically dipping forward as she slips into her dreams.

Gently, he eases her back into the bed. Idly he brushes the little hairs away from her forehead with the back of his hand, lingering for just a few more quiet moments. “Rest well,” he whispers. By the time he leaves her bedside, she’s already fast asleep.  
  


* * *

  
Sunset at Daytower is always heavily attended by the small settlement of Carja, especially since Avad’s arrival. He stands tall as the priest sings, his voice joining in song for the first time in… weeks, he realizes. Probably longer, as he has come to find that more often than not, he is more comfortable just listening and letting the voices of others wash over him.

Now, though, he needs the Sun to hear him. He needs his people to see him. He needs to slip back into his role as Sun-King. Right now, just being himself is too difficult, too complicated, and too mired in dangerous emotions.

In what world is it fair that Aloy should be so scarred, and so used to being on her own she is afraid to take medicine to numb her pain and give her rest? There’s been an anger kindling in him, and now he lets it flare – but only because it covers the deeper, more difficult emotions. Avad is lost, and he doesn’t have the slightest idea of how to go about finding himself. He doesn’t even realize that the Gloaming has ended, and he is standing alone on a parapet. He watches as the last light fades from the horizon, and continues to look out toward the West as smaller lights flare to life all around the fort.

When someone approaches, Avad doesn’t respond. Out of the corner of his eye, though, he sees Teb join him, standing a respectful foot behind him instead of right beside him, as equals.

As Aloy would stand, were she here.

Together, they let silence and night swaddle them in their chill. A little shiver goes through Avad, and Teb must notice it, because he cautiously clears his throat.

“Everything okay?” he asks, finally breaking that quiet.

Avad glances back and sees the way Teb is fidgeting. He purses his lips. The anger he feels isn’t directed toward Teb, per say, but at the tribe that mistreated Aloy so badly. By all accounts, the stitcher was one of the very few who had ever tried to befriend her, despite tribal law and superstition. 

So he shakes his head, turning to lean against the balustrade and face Teb in the process. “It wasn’t a serious wound, but it badly needed cleaning. She’s sleeping now.” That doesn’t stop Teb’s fidgeting, and Avad raises a questioning eyebrow. “What is it?”

“I was asking about _you_.” The stitcher’s voice is low and quiet, keeping their conversation guarded from idle listeners. He looks on-edge, almost overly cautious. “You look…”

When he trails off, Avad snorts. “Angry? I am. She has been alone for _so long,_ Teb _._ I don’t think she even knows she _can_ ask for help.”

“I mean, you’re right to be angry. It’s not okay. Not at all.” Teb sighs in a voice that’s barely a whisper, shaking his head. “But that’s not it.”

“What, then?”

The slight man levels a thoughtful, careful gaze on him. He bites at the inside of his cheek, clearly anxious about his thoughts. “You look heartsick.”

Avad stops short, and his throat tightens so abruptly that he isn’t able to respond. His eyes widen for just a second, before he tries to cover the surge of emotion with a mask built from years of diplomacy. “I am not sure what you…” he begins, then stops short. He raises a hand, rubs thumb and forefinger against the bridge of his nose, and closes his eyes. When he opens them again, Teb is looking away, hands in his pockets to try and still his own restless anxiety. Avad laughs softly but bitterly. “Is it so obvious?”

“A little,” Teb admits, raising his shoulders in a half-shrug. “Balahn was worried.”

Feeling as if his heart is in a vice, Avad crosses his arms over his chest. He wants to pick at his thumbnail, but in his mind he hears his father’s sharp voice, stilling his anxious movements. “Please… Please don’t say anything to her,” he whispers. “This is so important to her, I could not live with myself knowing I ruined it with my own foolish emotions. Whatever I am feeling – it doesn’t matter.”

Teb laughs softly, not at all unkindly. “Do you hear yourself, Avad? What about what’s important to _you_?”

A snappish reply comes quick to his tongue, but he bites it back. For the first time, he really considers what he’s saying, and it cuts him short. “I…” He swallows, falters. “I don’t know.”

“Well,” Teb says, pushing off the balustrade and wiping the dust from his nimble hands. He smiles at the king. “For what it’s worth, she let _you_ help her. I don’t think anyone else would have gotten that door open.”

“You don’t?” Avad feels like a fool, but there’s a strand of hope that Teb has dangled, and he finds himself clinging desperately to it.

“Not at all.” Teb reaches for him, gently patting his shoulder. “Get some rest, Your Radiance.”

Sleep _is_ an appealing thought, but Avad knows he’ll be thinking about this conversation long into the soft hours of the night. So he turns back to look out over the Sundom, and watches as the Moon takes her seat in the sky.  
  


* * *

  
In her room, swaddled in the shirt of a king and lulled to peace by hintergold’s soft touch, Aloy fades in and out of sleep. In her dreams, the sun’s gentle hands caress her skin, wrapping her in a warm embrace. 

She sleeps, and she dreams of Avad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> razorleaf = aloe  
> hemorrhage plant is a real plant, and super rad in wound care!


End file.
